Actor and activist Rowan Blanchard talks fashion, film and feminism
Photography by ZOEY GROSSMAN
Creative and Fashion Direction by ALISON EDMOND
Edited by MELISSA GOLDSTEIN
True to her Generation Z roots, Rowan Blanchard isn’t one to stay in the lane assigned to her. She made her name starring in the Disney Channel series Girl Meets World, and followed that with a turn in Ava DuVernay’s A Wrinkle in Time (2018), but for the 16-year-old Angeleno, the label “actor” doesn’t begin to skim the surface. There’s also her recent campaign for Miu Miu (which, for the record, has her “on cloud nine,” she says), yet adding “model” to her bio is, at best, reductive.
Instead, Blanchard describes herself as “a person who thinks a lot,” and backs it up: Look no further than her public musings on intersectional feminism and identifying as queer (she has 5.2 million followers on Instagram and more than half a million on Twitter), her speech at the U.S. National Committee for UN Women’s annual conference as part of #TeamHeForShe, and Still Here (Razorbill), her art project-styled book, published earlier this year, which features multimedia contributions from the likes of Gia Coppola and Jenny Zhang on the subject of teenagehood and growing up.
Naturally her friendships manifest in a creative crew, including Coppola, Yara Shahidi, and Rodarte’s Kate and Laura Mulleavy, who first met Blanchard at a dinner party they hosted to celebrate their 2016 collaboration with & Other Stories, and later invited her to co-star in their Fall 2018 lookbook alongside Kirsten Dunst, Grimes and Miranda July. “Rowan has an individual soul,” notes Laura, “and you want to see that within fashion, because fashion is about individuality.”
“It feels like everything is happening so quickly and so in the moment that if I stop to write about it, I’ll miss it”
The designers-cum-filmmakers, who will be the subjects of the first fashion exhibition organized by the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, D.C., this November, connected with Blanchard on the heels of her Miu Miu campaign to discuss artistic ammunition, the power of a public platform, and the unadulterated fun of fashion.
Laura: When Kate and I and Kirsten [Dunst] were shooting the movie we made together [Woodshock], we ended up watching Girl Meets World on our Saturdays off. There was something very exciting about you. We didn’t know anything about you, but we did wonder: Who is this person? It was cool to meet you and see that you have such a broad and wonderful curiosity. At what point in your life did you realize that you had an artistic inclination outside of acting?
Rowan: I started acting when I was 5, so it is basically the only thing that I remember. There was always this part of me that couldn’t really see myself just acting—just being somebody’s puppet. The more movies I watched and accumulated, and the more books I read, the more artists I learned about, I felt like I had more ammunition or something. Even on Girl Meets World, once I realized I could have input in the show rather than just playing Riley, it made me interested in creating more things.
Kate: Was it set up in your household to be interested in the arts, or is that something that kind of came from you?
Rowan: My parents definitely influenced me. It was encouraged: I saw The Rocky Horror Picture Show too early, and I was allowed to view art as art, and spend time in museums and sort of wander. When I started to have access to the internet on my own, I was able to fall into these internet spirals of artists…I think that’s a lot of why it seems like my generation is impressively well-informed in art and movies and stuff, because so much of online culture is based in aesthetic.
Kate: That reminds me: You wrote a book. Are you going to write another one?
Rowan: The book came out in February, and I still feel like so much has happened to me personally since then. So much of your teenhood is about dreaming about what it’s going to be like…and I’m finally hitting the point where I feel like I’m living the movie [moments] and having all these glimpses—like, oh, that’s like Heathers! At some point, when I’m able to get a bit of distance from it, I will sit and write. But right now, it feels like everything is happening so quickly and so in the moment that if I stop to write about it, I’ll miss it.
Laura: People always say that life’s short, so you have to take every moment to observe everything you can. It informs every artistic process—to be a part of life and to experience it. In fashion, I do notice how fast it’s all moving, and how much it’s changing. What makes you love fashion?
Rowan: Well, I find the idea of having a body to be so weird. Like, it’s weird to be born into a skin and just have to figure it out. And I think that fashion is this way—especially now in my teenage years, where I feel so strange about what it means to be looked at, and, like, wanting to be looked at and [wanting to] manipulate that. But also, it’s fun. And, of course, it’s serious and an art form, but it’s fun to try on clothes and I get excited for fittings and I get excited when I get to go to your studio.
Laura: It is! Fashion is fun. And you know, the participation of women fashion designers in fashion history is so powerful, and yet, still such a marginalized voice. I was just told that only 14 percent of major fashion companies are designed by, or headed by, women. But I feel like fashion is a world that is super accepting and still has so far to go…I mean, the greatest changes in fashion have happened because of women: Vivienne Westwood with punk, or Madeline Vionnet removing the corset, or, you know, Coco Chanel saying, ‘Let’s wear flats.’ I think that’s what’s so cool about it. What do you want to achieve with your voice?
Rowan: I still toy a lot with whatever it means to call myself an activist or an artist or someone who just likes words, and I guess at the end of the day, I’m just a person who thinks a lot, and sometimes it feels like I can compile those thoughts enough to share them with others. For me, the thing I really want to achieve by using my voice is to have more of a conversation. For now, I want to listen more and not speak as much, and maybe speak when I feel like what I have to say hasn’t been said, or it’s important for me to say it. There’s this sort of construed thing online that anyone who has a platform has to speak on everything.
Laura: For me, social media is a very different language form—it’s not something that I’ve ever felt like opening up on. I can get maybe four sentences out and that’s my limit. But it’s powerful to see someone so comfortable with it, using it. Because it’s natural to you, you have something to say that can go deeper, and I really appreciate it when people use it that way.
Rowan: Thanks, Laura!
Laura: You’re welcome. Let’s talk about your Miu Miu campaign, which just came out. It’s such a huge moment. I hope you celebrate [the campaign] and let it be fun and exciting. Sometimes you don’t take the time to appreciate these really big things that happen because you’re in a world of bigness—like, everything is about the public eye—but when you do have those moments you should take the time and say, ‘This is really special,’ because the first one doesn’t happen again.
Rowan: Teetering on the edge of modeling is terrifying to me, so being able to work with someone like Miuccia Prada—who is literally a radical and considers herself a communist, and never strives to make girls look desirable in a way that pertains to a male gaze—I really couldn’t be happier to have my first official campaign be representing her brand and her…
Kate: I’ve seen you be involved in fashion for a while now. There’s some people who fit in naturally with it, and don’t let it take over their lives, and when those people come around, you notice them. For me as a designer, I come from the school of thought that fashion is about challenging the status quo and sharing ideas, and working with you, Rowan, is always a pleasure. Is there anything else you’re looking forward to on the horizon?
Rowan: Hopefully I get to make more weird movies. I just want to write more things and act in more things and make things that I think are worth making. So much of the culture is to put things out and not take your time. I’ve been thinking about this quote by Solange where she says she doesn’t put things out until they’re finished. I’m sitting with that quote this summer and thinking about what I can make. And I’m not going to release it into the world until it’s finished.
Hair by LAURIE HEAPS using Redken.
Makeup by AMY STROZZI at TMG-LA using Tom Ford.
Nails by CHRISTINA AVILES at Opus Beauty using Essentiel by Adele.
Shot at The Paramour Estate.
This story originally appeared in the September 2018 issue of C Magazine.
