14 DAY TRIAL // Former plus-size model Crystal Renn is barely recognizable in the spread for the latest issue of French Vogue, shot by Tom Ford and styled by Carine Roitfeld: because she’s gone under the knife.
The famous model, who, as Fashionista points out, usually gets more media for her weight than she does for her modeling gigs, has been enhanced temporarily for the shoot, which aims to take a look at plastic surgery.
It’s being said that roughly 70 percent of the celebrities we see on TV and in movies have had some kind of work done, but only with some is this blatantly obvious.
Renn’s character for the shoot belongs to the latter category: she appears as a femme fatale whose face has been deformed through surgery and in a vain attempt at achieving perfection, together with a man who, by power of comparison, looks almost too pretty.
The spread is dark and moody, but quite amazing nonetheless, because it shows the kind of glamour that is probably attached to plastic surgery in the minds of those who overdo it – and which, in real life, doesn’t exist.
Above all, Fashionista says, the shoot will undoubtedly show that, before being a role model for the average woman and a mouthpiece for all those who have a problem with the way the industry obsesses with size 0, Renn is a stupendous model.
“We got word in advance that Ford would take on plastic surgery in his issue of French Vogue, but the resulting editorial, featuring the unstoppable Crystal Renn, is more dynamic (and at times grotesque) than we could have imagined,” the e-zine notes.
“This spread, titled ‘La Panthere Ose’ (or, according to my rusty french, ‘The Panther Dares’ – so perhaps panthers are cougars in France?), should put the focus squarely on Renn’s modeling ability and the story it tells about plastic surgery,” Fashionista further writes.
In order to create this deformed image of the gorgeous Renn, she had a cast made of her face, after which were modeled prosthetic cheeks and lips that she wore throughout the shoot.
Models may be somewhat reluctant when it comes to making themselves ugly for a shoot, but Renn relished it, saying it’s things like this that make her job more interesting and challenging.
“What I enjoy most about my job is the opportunity to express myself, often doing this by becoming a sort of character on the shoots that I do, and every time I work with Carine I feel the character approach is emphasized,” Renn says for Fashionista.
“When they were taking the cast of my face, fitting me for prosthetic cheeks and lips, I remember thinking this is why I do my job, for moments like this. After the shoot I took that very mask and asked Tom to sign it, it sits in my living room as we speak,” the model adds.
