Spur Magazine - Christina Kruse, interviewed by Wayne Sterling

Wayne Sterling, of Models.com & The Imagist interviewed Christina Kruse for Spur Magazine on January 31, 2009.



Christina Kruse rose with spectacular speed in the mid-90's through the pages of Harper's Bazaar and Italian Vogue to become one of the Hallmark models of her era. Which is why 12 years later it is wonderful to see this beautiful woman still front and center in blue chip brigades at the SS 09 Marc Jacobs show, the current CK One ads running in print and in television as well as her upcoming editorial in W Magazine as photographed by Inez van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin. The team of Inez and Vinoodh will also highlight Christina in the next issue of Purple in their nude "Pin Up" series that has featured models such as Angela Lindvall and Lara Stone in the past.

Spur met with Christina one bright Saturday morning in New York and what was most striking about Christina, apart from her timeless beauty, was the air of calm and completion that emanated off her in waves. Christina was in the middle of preparing for a massive exhibition of her artwork at a very prestigious New York gallery, but hers was very serene beauty that morning , unhurried and unworried. She spoke with a slight English accent in a very soft voice but her ideas of life, modeling, motherhood and fashion were very certain. Here is what Christina had to say.


Wayne Sterling: Good morning Christina. We're very excited to hear about your upcoming photo exhibit.
Christina Kruse:Well actually it's a show that's going to bring together all the work I'm been doing for the past 12 0r 13 years. So its not jut the photographs. There's going to be drawings and collages and prints and watercolors and photograms as wells as the portraits.

WS:Photograms like Man Ray used to make?
CK:Excatly. There'll also be portraits of others but with a special meaning that makes it fit into the entire exhibition. Its going to be here in New York at the Steven Kasher gallery on 23rd Street.

WS: Brilliant. How did this all come together? I mean, Steven Kasher is one of the biggest photo-gallaries in NY
CK: I got a show in Germany last year and they chose to show some of the portraits which took them a little bit out of the context in which they were meant to be seen. But that show travelled to Paris which is how I think it caught the attention of Steven Kasher. But before that I had been represented by Katy Barker, maybe 10 years ago as a photographer, so I kind of had some contacts in the photography world that encouraged me to do this.

WS: Its almost as if you have two parallel lives then...Christina the visual artist and Christina the fashion model.
CK: I have to say that I feel very fortunate to have my agency Women, managing my career the way they do. They really limit what I do to a tiny, tiny, tiny group of jobs.

WS: Super-super selective in other words.
CK: Very much so. Sometimes I'll be like... I don't mind doing that certain job but Women will say no...not that...only this and this and this. It is wonderful for me that way. I wake up in the mornings, I take the subway to my studio in Brooklyn. I do my work every day and then I come back into the city by 4 to pick up my son and make him his dinner. And then sometimes there are modeling jobs in between but it is with people who really inspire me and make me feel very comfortable to be in their company.

WS: Did you go art school as a teenager?
CK: No, it's funny. everybody always asks me that but I went to a regular school. I mean we had art classes and went to museums on field trips and all that. But no...I wasn't really the art student type. I left school in Germany when I was 15, by myself, to go to school in America. I went to school in Arizona. The program we were studying was closer to like...zoology...dissecting insects and stitting in fields studying different birds and insects. So there I was with my umbrella because being so pale I would get sun-burned easily and I was like "What was I thinking"

WS: You must have felt like David Bowie in "The Man Who Fell To Earth"
CK: Oh, but I made friends. There were these twins who were kind of like "earth sisters". They wore Birkenstocks and I wore Birkenstocks . They didn't shave their legs and i didn't shave my legs so we kind of identified with each other.

WS: How did you fall into modeling then?
CK: I was in a mall and this scout came up to me and asked me if I wanted to model. I was too young then. But one summer on my vacation all of a sudden I found myself in Italy, because that's where you started then. Things were different then. back then you wouldn't work until you had lots of tests in your book so you would have to go to Milan and shoot tons of tests. For instance I remember meeting Georgina Grenville in Italy back then and she became one of my best friends. But I remember being really impressed that her mother had allowed her to come to live in Milan on her own at such a young age. but even the shows were different then. They were really choreographed and you had to remember all these steps and turns . then we got to New York and all of that went away.

WS: And when did you start making art as your daily practice?
CK That would have been in...96? Though it didn't become really serious until 97. So it has been 12 years working now. I remember I used to go back and forth between Paris and New York so much, the stewardesses on Air France would recognize me because I would always be working on these little cards that I would water-color. A 7 hour flight was so long and boring, it was how I'd occupy my time. So after a while they'd know when my water was starting to become a little too muddy and dirty and they would have fresh water ready for me without my having to ask. That was really nice.

WS: I get the feeling that creating art is a very intuitive and organic thing for you. It is within you.
CK: Oh yes. It is about this dialogue that you have within yourself that has to be private. I' m one of those people who does not really mind being alone.


WS: Is it a struggle balancing the art work with raising your son?
CK: Not at all. In fact I feel really lucky to have nice life where I have the freedom to create and spend lots of time with my son. Being around a child also makes you more open and aware in many ways. They remind you of all the things you've forced yourself to forget. Take for instance the way children can learn languages so fast. That is because they can hear the phonetics of language that our ears no longer pick up. A child can hear the subtleties in the pronunciation of Mandarin. So having my child actually helps me to be more open and aware and perceptive.

WS: I get this feeling from you that you're very much at peace with yourself and the world around you and that you're quite happy
CK: Yes. I feel very lucky. I mean there are things I want to do and things I still want to create but that's going to require getting this really big job or getting some backing. But I'm afraid of that thing of having to answer to other people about what I create. I like that freedom of living my life quietly and carefully. Today for instance is my birthday and I'm going to go into the studio today and then see a play and then have dinner and there's not much more than that that I need. So its a good life you know.

WS: Well Happy Birthday Christina and thank you so much for taking a Saturday morning out to talk to Spur.
CK: Thank You Wayne It was very nice talking with you. I really enjoyed this!

Jil Sander Spring 2009

Jil Sander Clears the Runway
By CATHY HORYN

Mr. Simons’s collection for Jil Sander was incredibly gratifying; devouring, too. It made everything else look old. He might have risked something using a Man Ray photograph as a backdrop, since it signifies modernity. What if his collection was a pale imitation, another fashion game?

It was not. Mr. Simons used panels of draped fringe against dark wool crepe, so that it seemed less an adornment than a form of transparency, a play of light. The silhouette was always super lean, yet easy to wear. A fringe-paneled black dress appeared with leggings and sharp black suede platforms. That was the dominant idea. But there were lightweight wool jackets with deep overlapping panels, and some of the trim jackets (shown with shorts) had the feminine surprise of a draped back.

Everything was exceedingly well done: balanced, desirable, new. And the clothes were connected to the modernity of Mr. Simons’s men’s show in July. Like art or poetry, clothes can inform your understanding of things, change your eye. But the method can’t be faked.

On the Runway
By Cathy Horyn
I think it’s fair to say that people left the Jil Sander show this morning feeling a little high. At one point I said to Michael Roberts, probably around the time I was stuffing cookies in my mouth before the Bottega Veneta show, that we might want to replay Simons’ show in the course of the day, if we could of course. Just rewind the tape and see it again.

The problem with the still pictures from the show is that they don’t properly capture the glossy contrast of the fringe against the matte ground of a wool crepe dress or the details of the back of an outfit. A number of outfits appeared to be a rather sober jacket in the front, and something more surprising and feminine in the back—a drape, for instance, or an opening finished with black fringe to the hem of the jacket. It’s hard to explain, in fact, the effect of the fringe. On the first slim dress, with leggings and those black platforms with the whirling straps of suede around the ankles, the fringe was so incorporated into the cut and movement of the dress that it enhanced the body. I thought of the body-conscious dresses, the mummy dresses, that Alaia did in the 80s. Simons’ dresses were different, more delicate, but they were also about the body and movement. So particular and attractive.

There were other things going on in the collection, as many of you have noted in your posts. The jackets with the deep, slightly overlapping panels (shown with trim shorts), were another key look. And I loved the way this show seemed to talk, if that’s the right word, to Simons’ men’s show in July, which had the scuba shorts and the stripped-down tailoring.

Tim Blanks asked me after the show about the 1920s thing, the flapper fringe and the reference to Man Ray. (Two identical Man Ray images appeared as a backdrop and then dissolved when the show started.) The 20s reference was spelled out in the press notes, which I hadn’t read. Anyway, I didn’t even think about that during the show.

I guess most of us admire the fact that Simons offered up some very practical solutions to contemporary dressing—through simple but ingenious cutting, his choice of light-weight fabrics—and still left us enthralled by his creativity and imagination. Alber Elbaz strives to do the same thing. So does Alaia. Their approach is simple and direct, their stuff is honest and individually minded. We know it’s unanswerably contemporary. And no dressmaker-y sleeves, etc. I had an interesting talk the other day with Karl Templer, the stylist, and he wondered about all these “image for image” clothes we’re seeing now on the runways, clothes that are just for pictures. It’s becoming a weird pattern.

As Modern as Tomorrow
By Cathy Horyn

A great Jil Sander show today. I’ll write more later, but Raf Simon’s super-lean show and modern collection featured a kind of 1920s silhouette with insets of viscose fringe down the front or side of slim dresses and tunics worn with leggings. You would imagine that some of the fringe and wool crepe dresses were like wearing water…

Man Ray, Africa, the 20s—those were the vague inspirations in what is probably Simons’ best collection for Jil Sander. I personally loved the way this show communicated with his own men’s wear show from July, with those minimal jackets and biker-type shorts. There’s a lot to say about Simons’ huge push forward. The sense of decoration (the glossy fringe, the silver earrings that resemble spears with a cluster of diamonds), the combination of feminine draping on a light-weight jacket, everything intelligible and refined. He had the audience riveted. The closing music was “Camille’s Theme” from the film “Le Mepris.” Gorgeous.

Yulia Kharlapanova


Mariya Markina


Vlada Roslyakova


Kasia Struss


Georgina Stojiljković


Mariya Markina


Vlada Roslyakova


Yulia Kharlapanova


Kasia Struss