It all started with the Marc Jacobs Fall 2014 runway. Sandwiched between Langley Fox Hemingway and Ashleigh Good in the lineup, Kendall Jenner walked out in a V-front, completely sheer top. Pop-cultural pundits and the fashion industry alike went wild. A year later and Jenner’s moves are still tracked with careful eyes, though many more designers, from Alexander Wang to Karl Lagerfeld, have caught on to the famous teen’s sweet and stoic look. None of this would have come to pass without the backing of Katie Grand, the editor in chief of Love magazine and the creative director of the Marc Jacobs and Marc by Marc Jacobs campaigns and runway shows.
“We work with her at Marc because she looks great, she looks good in the clothes, and she is sophisticated and chic,” Grand told Style.com. “I liked the contrast of seeing her this season so done up and arched, compared to the bare face of last season. Her very dark lip and dark hair looked so striking against the yellow of her pretty yellow floral dress,” the stylist explained of casting Jenner in Jacobs’ Fall 2015 Diana Vreeland-inspired show.
In the industry, Grand was the first to accept Jenner as a real, honest-to-goodness model when many saw her presence as an attention-grabbing stunt. It was her support of Jenner that led her to catwalk appearances at Giles’ Fall 2015 show (where she was a London exclusive), Marc Jacobs’ past three runways, and a turn at Tomas Maier’s Spring 2015 Bottega Veneta show (Jenner wasn’t available for this season’s Bottega show)—all styled by Grand. The model has also nabbed two spreads in Grand’s glossy, Love. “I’ve worked with Kendall for a year now. It’s been fascinating to see the transformation from the shy teenager sitting in the Marc Jacobs reception to the supermodel she is today,” Grand explained. “She’s still the same, punctual, friendly, hardworking girl—just much, much more famous within the fashion world.”
While Jenner goes through her days like any other model—castings, fittings, early-morning call times—some things are still a little different for her. “This season, at Marc, we had to make sure her fitting was done in a room with blinds, as the paparazzi had camped out on the roof opposite the studio to try and get a shot of her,” Grand noted. “In all my years being a stylist and working with the likes of Kate and Naomi, I have never known the paps to try and get a shot of a fitting with a long lens from across the street.” There you have it: Kendall Jenner, one of the big guns—if not, maybe, the biggest.
See all of Jenner’s Fall 2015 catwalk turns in the slideshow.
—Steff Yotka, Style.com
