Hero, Not Zero

Fashion’s biggest model, Crystal Renn, talks to The Independent about why size matters and how being beautiful and big could change the face of the industry. “The painfully hip New York hotel bar in which I am supposed to be meeting Crystal Renan is full. The skinny young host (fashionably draped in black and looking like a medieval pageboy) assures me there is not a table to be had for neither love nor money. But when I mention that I’m going to be interviewing the world’s most successful plus-size model, he manages to squeeze us in. Crystal Renan has been in Vogue; she has been in catwalk shows and ad campaigns; she has been photographed by Steven Merisel, Craig McLean and Patrick Demarchelier. She is the commercial face of high street chains Mango and Evans. She has written a book. In short, she has done everything that aspiring Naomis, Kates and Agynesses dream of, but she has done it (shock! horror!) as a UK size 16. In an industry where most mainstream models are no bigger than a size eight and anyone bigger than that is lucky to get catalogue work, this is simply unheard of. Renn, 23, isn’t exactly a new face. She’s been modelling for nearly 10 years, but she is the new face of something. Some call it a movement or a revolution, others a long-overdue adjustment, but Crystal Renn is certainly having what fashion types like to call a ‘moment’.”