Crystal Renn for ELLE Canada

Work that riding crop, girl.

ELLE Canada December 2010 Issue
Editorial: "Show Girl"
Stylist: Fritz
Photographer: Leda & St. Jacques
Hair: Paco Puertas
Makeup: Geneviève Lenneville
Art Direction: Denis Desro
Shot at Les Écuries La Montée in Saint-Bruno, Québec.

Simon Chang strapless chiffon and feather gown

Donna Karan Fall 2010 Collection

By Malene Birger strapless taffeta dress

Groupe J. S. International draped jersey dress

IZMA Fall 2010 Collection

Dolce & Gabbana Fall 2010 Collection

Dolce & Gabbana silk-velvet bustier dress

Marie Saint Pierre asymmetrical wool-jersey dress

Helmer strapless silk dress

Thien Le satin and tulle dress

First off, it's a gorgeous editorial. The girl can work the shit out of a dress when given the chance to do so sans gimmicks. Nice to see an editorial with her where she isn't eating, being compared to smaller women, or posing naked with a sample sized dress draped over her because it doesn't fit. She looks gorgeous, full stop. And the clothes suit her. We're digging the Jane Russell vibe we're getting from the hair and makeup.

Now. This is one of those things where if we don't mention it, there'll be dozens of comments exclaiming "I can't believe you didn't mention this!" The elephant in the room, pun very much not intended. Namely this: she's lost weight, right? We honestly aren't as good as you might think at guessing someone's size just by looking at them. We've always been too busy judging the clothes to learn that little skill. Even so, the model who became known for chipping away at the extreme sizeism in the fashion industry has gone down a size or two herself, has she not? Part of the reason we feel bad saying this is because Crystal herself admitted the other day at the Glamour Women of the Year conference that she reads blog posts about her:

"I absolutely read what people say about me, because I want to know where we're weak in this whole conversation. So I read blog comments. And one person will say, 'Wow, she's so fat. Look at her. She's so obese.' And then right underneath, someone else will say, 'Look how emaciated she is. She's so anorexic.' Fat is relative. One person's thin is someone else's so-called fat."

We would hardly call her emaciated just as we'd hardly call her fat. In fact, her body size is her own business. But it is notable that she's noticeably thinner after having made a name for herself for not being model skinny. If she's happy and healthy and doing what she wants, then good for her. We just hope she hasn't been pressured by the industry to normalize herself. By their standards of normal, of course.

She had a couple of other quotes from the same event that we thought were of interest as well:

"What I would like to see is a bunch of different-sized models in fashion. Right now, we have extremes. We have size 2s and size zeros, and then over here we have size 14s and 16s. What I would like to see happen is that you watch the runway and you see all different sizes — you see 2s, you see 4s, you see 6s, we see 12s and 14s. Then there's no controversy about body size. Then it's all about the clothes."

"I think that the solution would be to make the sample size an 8 or a 10. It's currently a 2, or a 4 if you're very lucky. If you made it an 8 or a 10, then bigger girls — even 12s and 14s — could somehow get into the clothes, and also the 8s and 6s and 4s and 2s could have the clothes pinned on. I know from working in the plus-size industry, they have pinned clothes to me when it's been a sample size 24. I've seen it work for a plus size, and I have no idea why we don't have size 8s and 10s as sample sizes for straight-size models. Because right now, we're all talking all the time about how we want to see fuller-figured women in fashion, but that's really impossible unless we have the clothes. "

BRAVA. Nice to see she's got a high-functioning head on her shoulders.

[Image Credit: thefashionspot/jacquelineo, style.com]

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Labels: Crystal Renn, ELLE, Fashion, Magazine Cover/Editorial