Kendall Jenner Channels '60s Space Queens on New Dazed Cover

By Julianne Escobedo Shepherd | November 26, 2014 | 7:50pm

As the newly mononymous Kendall transforms her reality-TV stardom into a modeling career, she is racking up plum placements by the pound: just after the announcement that she’s the new face of Estee Lauder, she picks up her next cover in the form of an avant-garde look at British emerging culture mag Dazed & Confused.

Actually, there are three covers, marked with the coverline “Changing the Face of Fashion.” In the first, she’s giving Barbarella-era space queen in head-to-toe PVC Junya Watanabe, from his wacky, space-rave Spring 2015 collection. In her review of that line, Jo-Ann Furniss said it “comments on and furthers the graphic march of people as corporeal Tumblrs.” To that end, maybe Dazed is making a cheeky comment about Kendall’s status as reality TV princess being the ultimate in RIGHT NOW, (although I’m still kinda waiting for rebellious Kylie to come into her own).

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On the second cover, Kendall’s doing literal yesteryear in a Twiggy-style Marc Jacobs jacket, totally Mod Squad but also congruous with the Junya futurism on the flip.

Finally, they combined the two in a collage by Doug Abraham, maybe commenting on the fact that while Jenner is a very current face in a full-blown spectator culture, there’s also something very conservative and traditional about that, that even big-time Hollywood entertainment families floated by Ryan Seacrest are essentially versions of ancient monarchy and power structure. Or not! But Kendall’s interesting because her modeling career is essentially impossible to separate from her start on the longest running reality show ever: we’ve watched her grow up on the boob box, Truman Show-style, and now we get to see her at work, at her first real job. Imagine if people were glued to watching you on the security cams at the Burger King, or wherever you worked at 15? (I was a Subway sandwich artist, thank you very much.)

This is Dazed‘s issue showing “100 cultural renegades changing the face of fashion, film, art, and music” not just Kendall, and those renegades include Kiernan Shipka, Kelela and Gia Coppola. My favorite pullquote from the issue is from New York designer Telfar Clemens, who says, “I want to be Michael Kors, but on purpose.”

Images via Dazed & Confused