Crystal Renn and Zac Posen’s Other Real Women
Photos of a slimmed down Crystal Renn, who is quickly going from gorgeous plus-sized model to just plain gorgeous model, appears in photos for Zac Posen’s Pre-Fall 2011 collection alongside Leigh Lezark, Hilary Rhoda and Anna van Ravenstein.
The sometimes curvy, sometimes slim, always gorgeous Crystal Renn. Despite the appearance of variation in size, each photo is from the same shoot.
Other than Crystal Renn’s smaller shape, the thing that stood out to us most upon going in for the closeup view on Vogue UK is that the models look like real women.
Allow us to explain: we don’t mean that in a “real women have curves” way (real women come in all kinds of shapes, including thin and curveless), but that real women have sharp bones, and freckles, and moles, and underarm folds of skin, and angles where these things can be more or less prominent, and any number of things which are normally Photoshopped away in a quest for the type of aspirational imagery that even the models who are the basis for the images can’t achieve in real life.
Hilary Rhoda's unairbrushed freckles and underarm skin folds. Beautiful.
We don’t highlight any of these things as a negative: even without being airbrushed into CGI quality illustrations, each of the girls has an aspirational quality that would make us buy what they’re selling. Knowing that industrial strength makeup, just the right lighting, and an unachievable body aren’t required to look good in a certain dress gives just enough reality to make us believe in the fantasy of the clothes.
