I must admit, I’ve never been one to keep up with models. I adore Heidi Klum for her often ridiculous critiques on Project Runway, but otherwise no one model has won me over as a big fan. However, I have recently become enamored with Crystal Renn. Not only do I find her beautiful, her lack of sexy-face brings something new and interesting to the table. Of course, she is known for more than just her expressive photographs; Renn is a size 12 and the leading “plus-size” model working in the industry right now.

At 23, Cystal Renn has been working as a model for seven years, a career she documents in her memoir Hungry (penned with Marjorie Ingall, a former Sassy contributor). Reviews of the book, or articles about Crystal Renn, all seem to provide the same synopsis of her life. She was discovered at a charm school in Mississippi by a modeling scout who told her she could be a supermodel if she lost nearly ten inches off her hips. To achieve this goal, she began dieting heavily and developed an eating disorder, bringing her weight down to less than 100 pounds. She realized the scope of her illness and was able to recover and has now become a very successful plus-size model that works in mainstream fashion magazines like Vogue. And of course, that is all true, but in this book she engages critically with her past, the industry, and her continuing career as a model in a way that is sold short by a sound bite summary. Her recollections of filling her mouth with peanut butter only to wash it out, crying, are enough to make me hungry. While she writes a personal memoir, Renn’s accounts of sitting starving and miserable in her crappy New York model’s apartment bring into focus a larger reality that exists behind the glossy pages.

The chapters that follow the Renn’s life are staggered, with chapters dissecting body image and the inner workings of the fashion industry. Size and beauty are concepts that are intrinsically linked in our society, and Hungry provides more analysis than I expected. One point that Renn focuses on is how the issue of extreme thinness in the fashion world is consistantly made out to be someone else’s problem. Magazines claim to show women who are thin because designers send them sample sizes, but of course designers say they are making clothing for thin women because the magazines define this size as what is in style. And when blaming each other doesn’t work, it seems that the industry blames the models themselves. The book also discusses how the “waif look” (read: skeletal) seems to be tied to xenophobia. While of course there are waifs of many colours, Renn notes how the seasons that are populated by extremely thin woman on the runway (a recent trend) are overwhelmingly white. She believes this is tied to people’s belief that thinness connotes higher class; marginalized populations (which include millions of people of colour) have higher obesity rates, so therefore whiteness and thinness can be read as signifiers of luxury. And what is luxury if it doesn’t exclude 99.9% of us? Or employ a migrant work force of teenage girls?

Renn comes off as a likable, introspective person. I can definitely see how this book will appeal to WORN readers; she poses some serious questions about how we view our bodies through the lens of fashion, but she still takes time to gush about working with Jean Paul Gautier and Steven Meisel. Her life story is no doubt similar to other young models, but because she has become so successful she has the opportunity to speak out. And luckily for us, she is ready and willing to intelligently examine the fashion industry, while still enjoying the widespread acceptance she has received by it.

Hungry: A Young Model’s Story of Appetite, Ambition and the Ultimate Embrace of Curves by Crystal Renn and Marjorie Ingall (Simon & Schuster 2009)

book review by Hillary Predko

I first read about Ben Barry when Teen People named him “one of twenty teens who will change the world.” I felt proud because Barry was a Canadian high school student, just a year older than me. He was on a mission to transform the fashion industry’s narrow standard of beauty by running a modeling agency that represented models of all ages, sizes, and ethnicities.

Reading Barry’s memoir Fashioning Reality, I felt like it had been written for my teenaged self. As he outlines his successes and struggles, Barry offers advice for young would-be entrepreneurs on how they too can use business to create social change.

Barry started his agency when he was 14 to represent a friend who had been told by a magazine editor that she was “too big” to model. At first he was motivated by a concern that images of unhealthy models were detrimental to the health and self-worth of his friends, but he soon realized that using “real” models was also a successful business model, since companies that used his models almost always saw increased profits as a result.

Like we do at WORN, Barry believes that consumers want and deserve to see a diversity of ages, sizes, and ethnic backgrounds represented in the media. I’m a firm believer that we should never put people down to elevate others, and so I admire that he never criticizes thin women as not being “real,” instead stressing that thin, white, and tall is overdone, and argues that there’s a desperate need for greater diversity.

“We aim to change the face of fashion by representing models of all ages, sizes, cultures, and abilities. Fashion belongs to all of us.” Ben Barry Agency

The book follows the Ben Barry Agency’s professional highs (such as playing a major role in the Dove Campaign for Real Beauty) and its lows (frustrating meetings with designers and editors who refuse to see the merit of diverse models). As we follow the agency’s humble start in the basement of Barry’s family home in Ottawa through to its opening international offices in New York and London, we also see Barry’s personal growth as he moves from high school student to Women’s Studies major to Cambridge University MBA holder.

His views about unrealistic beauty representation are nothing we haven’t heard before, but a scan of any newsstand shows that while we’ve been talking about these issues for years, we’ve yet to see any big changes. Diverse models are still a novelty – if you’re not 5’10”, white, and a size zero, you’re probably not smiling at me from the cover of any mainstream fashion magazine. I’m glad people like Barry are there to remind us that the fight for diverse representations of beauty in models is nowhere near complete.

The book is most interesting when Barry brings us behind closed doors to hear firsthand how reluctant advertisers, editors and designers are to change. I would expect more from an industry so reliant on always-changing trends.

However, I did take issue with Barry’s argument that the business world is the best arena to achieve social change, and that other methods are outdated. Having worked in the non-profit sector and volunteered with grassroots movements, I know that change doesn’t have to be profit-motivated.

More than anything, I think this book could serve as a valuable motivational tool for teenagers looking to make a difference. The 25-year-old me is impressed with everything Barry has achieved (he can now add “published author” to his resume before his 30th birthday), but I think I think my 15-year-old self would have felt empowered to read how a high school student was able to make money, gain recognition, and yes, change the world.

Fashioning Reality: A New Generation of Entrepreneurship, Ben Barry, Key Porter Books, 2007
review by Jaclyn Irvine

Superheroes: Fashion and Fantasy, edited by MET Costume Institute curator Andrew Bolton, attempts to bridge the gap between the world of fictional crime fighters and contemporary fashion design. The book features the work of some of the most highly regarded fashion houses, as well as the best of Iron Man, Spiderman, Cat Woman and the like.

Superheroes: Fashion and Fantasy begins with an essay by novelist Michael Chabon discussing the relationship between superheroes and their costumes. In what Chabon coins as “Unitard Theory,” he emphasizes that the costume/clothing of a superhero is more than a mere unitard-cape combination. The costume serves as a spectacle of transformation, symbolizing humanity’s desire to manipulate and reinterpret their bodies into physically perfected, supernatural beings. The essay, originally written for The New Yorker, lays the foundation for the remaining eight sections of the book. Bolton has arranged the book into the following sections based on the designers’ attempt to interpret the body as a constantly changing entity: The graphic body, the patriotic body, the viral body, the paradoxical body, the armoured body, the aerodynamic body, the mutant body and the postmodern body. Each of these sections explores how the superhero costume has influenced the design of radical couture, avant-garde sportswear and state-of-the-art military garments.

The book itself is also aesthetically pleasing. Printed in full colour on thick glossy paper, it has taken on the characteristics of an actual superhero. Comic books are usually floppy and easily destructible. This book is the complete opposite. Armoured in a tin, the book itself represents the strength and endurance embodied by the superhero.

Dolce and Gabbana’s spring 2007 collection inspired by Iron Man

Superman was North America’s prototype of what would become the very definition of a superhero: a public figure endowed with otherworldly powers, committed to fighting evil for the betterment of society. Since his inception, and the slew of crime-fighting crusaders that followed, the superhero (like fashion) has established itself as a powerful influence upon society. They embody the hopes, dreams, and fantasies of humankind. Often disregarded as superficial and frivolous, it is their very lack of seriousness that enables superheroes to address greater social issues without controversy or objection. Over the years, superheroes have metaphorically represented our social and political realities. They reveal shifting ideologies and attitudes towards identity, sexuality, and agency, as they are constantly being redefined to reflect ideal interpretations of beauty and character.

Similarly, fashion also embodies many of the characteristics for which superheroes have become famous. Fashion not only shares the superhero’s metaphorical diversity, but it also embraces and flourishes based on its ability to transform. Fashion celebrates metamorphosis, providing designers with unlimited opportunities to reinterpret the body and the self. Superheroes: Fashion and Fantasy brings its readers a different understanding of the relationship between popular culture and fashion design. And even if you don’t truly believe that Iron Man was the inspiration for Dolce and Gabbana’s spring 2007 collection, the book is still worth the read.

Edited by Andrew Bolton, Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2008
Reviewed by Candice Okada

As much a history lesson as it is a chronological account of fashion happenings in 1960s London, Boutique is an attractive, easy-to-read, and overall pleasant approach to explaining the impact of the boutique. Author Marnie Fogg hopes to demonstrate just how the rise of boutiques in the sixties “gave voice, form, and location to the youthful desire for independence and personal freedom, and in turn led to an unprecedented awareness of fashion as a vibrant medium of self-expression.” By talking about the clothes themselves, as well as the individual retailers and designers who provided new styles to shoppers, and, most importantly, the meanings these clothes expressed in the context in which they were worn, Fogg takes an intelligent and informative stance on a topic that could otherwise be light and fluffy.

The word “boutique” originally defined a shop within a shop, or a section of a department store that offered entirely different merchandise than what was available throughout the rest of the store. In the ’60s, boutiques began to separate from department stores, opening their own doors on obscure back-streets and alleyways, and they initially required shoppers to search for them. With the rise of innovative boutiques such as Biba, Mary Quant, and Granny Takes a Trip, which were set up to feel more like a closet or bedroom than a market, shopping became an exciting activity for those with money.

Boutiques gave more credit to designers and quality than department stores ever did, and they allowed shoppers new means of self-expression and creativity with their wardrobes. Because independent boutiques didn’t offer mass-produced merchandise, they had very limited numbers of garments that sold out quickly, causing a fast turnover of styles. There was always something new to buy, and if you were young, wealthy, and cool, you’d be in line to buy it.

Fogg’s use of images is perhaps what sets Boutique apart from other, often dry, straight-information history books. It does not, however, dumb down its subject. Each page of Boutique is filled with colourful photographs, designer illustrations, magazine cut-outs, and newspaper clippings - the text is almost secondary. Images are outfitted with lengthy captions that explain why they’re important, and each one conveys something that Fogg’s central text may have left out. Members of fashion-focused subcultures like teddy boys and mods are defined not by words, but through their own aesthetics in all their posed and photographed glory. Fogg’s choice of pictures makes the reading process feel quick and easy - you don’t have to imagine what happened to clothing when LSD became a staple in many young peoples’ diets; you can see it all in colour.

In addition to providing an interesting array of imagery, Fogg’s Boutique provides multiple perspectives on her topic, including those of industry retirees who have quite exciting memories of London’s fashion scene in the ’60s. Although it is sometimes difficult to tell which anecdotes come from interviews and which come from Fogg’s prior readings on the subject (her bibliography is vast, but her acknowledgements list several interviewees), the voices are seamlessly tied together to make Boutique feel more like a ’60s magazine than an informative work on fashion and lifestyle.

Fogg’s Boutique not only describes the merchandise, typical shoppers, and even the aura surrounding several different shops in London in detail, it also talks about the impact the boutique scene had on many facets of life in the ’60s. Besides the newfound fun in the activity of shopping itself - a result of more disposable income than ever before - Boutique discusses the lasting effects boutique culture has had on fashion magazines and art schools. With the sudden obsession with boutique shopping came a widespread desire to attend colleges for all types of fashion design, inspiring a generation of young creative workers. Magazines were no longer about women and the things they ought to enjoy. In the ’60s, they came to be “about femininity itself, as a state, a condition, a craft, and as an art form which comprises a set of practices and beliefs.”

I don’t think there is a page in Marnie Fogg’s Boutique: A 60s Cultural Phenomenon without at least one beautiful picture; there was creative, inspiring energy just seeping from each chapter; and my view of the ’60s is changed forever – no longer is it just “a period of drug- and sex-fuelled decadence,” as the book’s introduction implies. Now, it’s an era whose place in history I can say I understand and appreciate. At times during my reading I felt a bit angry, though: Why wasn’t I alive to experience the era in which “going shopping” was just starting to get interesting?

Boutique: A 60s Cultural Phenomenon by Marnie Fogg, Octopus Publishing Group Ltd, 2003
Reviewed by Stephanie Fereiro