By NICKY CHAMP
“Modelling to me isn’t just about being good-looking or having a lot of fun and being really really good-looking”And same goes for Crystal Renn.
The 26-year-old model is calling for sample sizes to be made bigger; speaking out at a panel, Inside the Modeling Industry: A Conversation About Health and Beauty in Fashion, as part of National Eating Disorders Awareness Week in New York.
Onya Crystal.
Renn believes that designers should change from the standard U.S. size zero or 2 (Australian size 4 or 6) to a U.S. size 8 (Australian size 12).
“By having a size 8 sample, you are giving freedom to a designer,” she said. “Most of the models are going to be size 6s and 8s, and you could have 10s, and if a really amazing model walked in who was a size 0, you would tailor the dress down to her.”
Renn has (unsurprisingly) struggled with eating disorders in the past after being told to lose 10 inches off her waist and to look to Vogue magazine for inspiration by the model scout who initially signed her. In her book, Hungry, she reveals the pressure to conform to the industry’s impossible standards led her weight to spiral down to a frightening 43 kilos.
Given the disturbing revelations from ex-Vogue Australia editor, Kirstie Clements, about fit models eating tissues and regularly fainting from hunger in order to fit the size zero mould, I’m wondering just who is the chicken and who is the egg in the fashion industry.
Or in other words: who is driving models to starve themselves? Is it the fashion designers or is the modelling industry?