Model Crystal Renn has serious curve appeal. Given her international runway spins (Jean Paul Gaultier, anyone?), her lucrative campaigns for high-profile plus-size clothing brands like Lane Bryant, and her recent memoir (Hungry: A Young Model’s Story of Appetite, Ambition and the Ultimate Embrace of Curves), it’s hard to imagine that this 24-year-old heavenly body was once, literally, dying to be thin. In Toronto to walk in Joe Fresh Style’s Fall 2010 show, Renn talked to FASHION about her metabolic metamorphosis, overcoming her eating disorder and becoming the industry’s plus-size poster girl.
When did you have your first “aha!” moment about the plus-size business? “I was 17 years old—it was life-changing. I had to look before me and say, ‘If I continue on the path that I am on, there’s a possibility that I could lose my life.’ You can’t deny the symptoms that come with anorexia; I wanted to get healthy. When my agent said ‘plus-size modelling,’ I had never heard of such a term. I was intrigued. I had dreamed of being a model, not of starving myself.”
Do you feel pressure as a poster girl for the plus-size industry? “I’m very happy to do it. It becomes difficult when people think I’m a saint in all areas of my life and expect me to be perfect.”
Growing up, who was your role model? “No one, really, growing up. The woman who inspired the change in my body was Nigella Lawson. She’s beautiful, but it was how she was eating and how she looked at her body that mattered.”
What has been your fondest career moment so far? “My first American Vogue shoot, which was with Steven Meisel, a photographer whose work I had been following since I was 14. When I worked with him at my natural size—you know, without starving—and he believed in me…I remember thinking I was doing the right thing.”
What would you like to add to your growing resumé? “I would love to do a brand of makeup. Women look to beauty brands to set the standard of beauty. It would be extremely positive if they used a size-12 girl.”
I don’t like the term “plus-size.” Do you? “What it means to me is freedom. It takes away number obsession. Lose or gain an inch, there’s no pressure—there’s always work.”
Maybe we need to come up with a new vernacular. “I think just ‘models’ will do.”
Do you think this is just a passing trend? “I’m optimistic that it’s a true change. Every decade has a body type. The ’50s was the hourglass, the ’60s was thin, the ’80s was the Amazonian woman, the ’90s was the waif. Let’s not make it about one body type—let’s have them all, and that should last forever.”
When I googled your name, search words like “measurements” and “before and after” popped up. Which words would you like to see beside your name? “No longer hungry.”
First published in FASHION Magazine August 2010
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Gail hubbard writes:
Very smart girl!
—posted June 29, 2010 at 7:42 p.m.
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