Emily Ratajkowski

The image and its author

Emily Ratajkowski works across modeling, acting and writing. Her screen credits include Gone Girl, and she made her professional runway debut for Marc Jacobs in 2015. In 2021 she published My Body, an essay collection that examines experiences connected with appearance, work and the circulation of images.

This makes authorship a useful starting point for a fashion profile. A campaign photograph is the result of styling, lighting and a commercial brief; a personal essay offers a different kind of account. Reading both avoids treating a photographed body as the whole story. Her career allows fashion imagery to be considered alongside the perspective of the person whose likeness is being used.