http://youtu.be/mXsBnQK6eNA Recently, a Japanese Vogue spread for which Crystal Renn had taped her temples garnered a lot of controversy when a behind-the-scenes video showed the tape (which didn’t appear in the final spread thanks to the magic of Photoshop). Given fashion spreads that glorify or reference blackface have become common in recent years, you could forgive fashion writers for concluding that Vogue had employed eye tape to make Renn look “more Asian.” Indeed, that was my initial assumption. I brought the shoot up on the phone with Crystal yesterday,* and she surprised me with her explanation of the eye tape, and why she — not the makeup artist or the fashion editor — had requested it that day. Renn had a lot to say about race, transformation, the many editorial choices that go into the production of the imagery fashion trades in.
A warning: what follows is perhaps the world’s longest published conversation about eye tape.
Jenna Sauers: So explain why your eyes were taped. And, uh, explain how, for one thing. Explain how they taped your eyes, because I’m still like, ‘How does that not hurt?’
Crystal Renn: Oh no it doesn’t at all. It’s great. You just feel the character, because it’s so not you — and in a way you become something else. It’s kind of just the extra key of the transformation. And transformation is why I did it. Anna Dello Russo did not tell me to tape. No-one told me at the shoot to tape. It is something that I often do to add to the look of the character if I feel that the look makes sense, and often I suggest it. I have very heavy brows, and they’re more curved than straight, and sometimes when you’re doing a character it might require more of a straight brow. Which sounds like such a small detail, but it can completely transform the face. Lots of actresses do this, models do this — I don’t know how willing models usually are to do it, or if other people suggest it, but I am willing, and I even bring [tape] it in my own kit.
It made sense for the makeup. When you’re at a shoot, you sit down, and you hope — at least, in my career, I’ve made it a point to be part of the team, and that’s what I like so much about modeling, because I really enjoy about the job — so I really try to be as involved as I can be with makeup, with hair, with the creative direction. I wanna know what’s going on at all times and offer my own suggestions. You know, everyone comes in with kind of their expertise. Makeup knows what they’re doing, but they have to know your face. Creative direction, they know what they want for the shoot. The photographer has to highlight who you are with the light. And I, the model, know my face in different lights. I know my face in different makeups. I know my body in clothes. I know what works. Because I’ve been doing this so long, and I take it very, very seriously. So something such as tape — yeah, that’s not surprising on an everyday basis. Every day, that could happen. And just because we were shooting Japanese Vogue, that is not why we did the tape.
Jenna: So it’s not about race — it’s about your brow shape. Can you give some examples of other jobs that you’ve done with tape — are there famous pictures of you out there where you’re wearing eye tape and I’ve just never noticed?
Crystal: Oh yeah! Yeah — tons. A perfect example, and an extreme case where I taped even more than usual was the French Vogue plastic surgery shoot. Where we were kind of even making fun of the whole fact that the entire face was completely done in a different way. That was a complete transformation, more than any shoot I’ve ever done.
Jenna: Yeah, you were using latex, and facial prosthetics, and all kinds of crazy stuff.
Crystal: Yeah. That was absolutely a job where I suggested tape, I thought it was fantastic — um, it just added to the character. And sure, that’s an extreme case—
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