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Emily Ratajkowski Isn’t Just In It for Attention

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emily ratajkowski

Here’s what it’s like to arrive at a fashion show at the same time as Emily Ratajkowski: She rolled up to the base of the High Line at 14th Street in a black Suburban and stepped out onto the street to a noticeable hush—the sound of everyone within 20 feet inhaling sharply. She was wearing all black—a bodysuit from DKNY, slinky mid-length skirt with an asymmetric zippered slit, banded thigh-high stockings, and high strappy patent sandals. The effect was sort of “Bringing Up Bebe.” It wasn’t an ensemble designed for speed, and I quickly overtook her on the stairs, only to be waylaid at security while she breezed through.

Ratajkowski was attending the DKNY Spring 2017 show courtesy of the brand’s intimates and hosiery branch. It’s an interesting marriage (or maybe “quickie” seems more appropriate), given she’s not known as being the most unassailably undergarment-ed person out there. You could check her Instagram, if for some reason you’re unfamiliar, or you could go to the images tab on her Google results. This week, you can even go to her news tab, where you’ll find her at the Harper’s Bazaar Icons event in a Julien Macdonald dress with more antennae than straps. Her approach in regard to “intimates” for that event? “Oh, I mean, that was pretty…simple,” said Ratajkowski. “I was wearing underwear but the dress itself kind of acted as lingerie. I didn’t have to do anything for that [motions across boobs], ‘cause there was netting that held the two pieces together.” Turns out that when you want to tone down your décolleté, tape, pasties, even bras aren’t always the answer. “I used to really be envious of girls who had a smaller cup size ‘cause they didn’t have to wear bras and they had that really cute little side boob and it wasn’t offensive to anyone,” Ratajkowski said. “And then one day I realized that wearing a bra that shapes your breasts super-unnaturally can be more aggressive, whereas just not wearing a bra at all can be actually really nice. The natural shape of a natural breast is actually less overtly sexual than one that’s in a push-up bra.”

Clouds of DKNY-approved fragrance wafted overhead, and the temperature dipped to a balmy 70 degrees. Something Rachmaninoff-y banged itself out on an over-amped grand piano. More models started to trickle in, some also in DKNY’s intimates collection.

Ratajkowski hasn’t just been vacationing in Greece this summer. She’s also been on a writing streak, with essays appearing in Lena Dunham’s Lenny Letter (“We’re friends. I had dinner with her last night,” said Ratajkowski) and in Glamour, running alongside her photo spread. Her pieces usually tie together the disparate but sticky strands of fame, sexiness, self-promotion, and a kind of feminism that lets you have all of the above. Ratajkowski’s embraced the free democratic press of the Internet, where she defends herself in classic pro se form—she’s found in writing and on Instagram she’s her own best representative. “A lot of the things I’ve been talking about throughout my career—throughout my life—I’d talk about in the context of an interview where someone else was able to dictate and change those ideas or put the context around it as they saw fit,” said Ratajkowski. “Then I realized I live in a world where I can put out whatever images I want, so why shouldn’t I write my own pieces or op-eds instead of leaving it to someone else to do that?”

The thrust of her Glamour piece was that attention can be sought for its own sake, and that women should be just as celebrated for doing it as men (in her estimation) are.

“ ‘She’s doing that for attention.’ ‘She posted that picture for attention.’ That’s always the way we dismiss a woman’s actions, so that’s the problem I have with it.” Ratajkowski says it’s a general problem, not a specific one. “Even before I was a celebrity I got that accusation all the time.”

Attention is something I suggest she’s uniquely equipped to handle—that a million likes on a photo is not something most people could exactly take in stride. Ratajkowski extended a few twiggy fingers my way, perishing the thought. “It probably feels the same as you when you get, like, three new followers. It’s the same feeling, just on a different scale. The raw human emotion is exactly the same.”

I returned to my seat in the clump of benches opposite hers. Last I saw before the crowd blocked her out, she was still patiently pouting, chin tilted down, shot after shot, ankles crossed, standing at attention.

 

Watch Emily Ratajkowski speak Gaelic, show us around her L.A. loft, and talk presidential ambitions:

The post Emily Ratajkowski Isn’t Just In It for Attention appeared first on Vogue.


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