“I come from modeling, so I knew a lot of the designers—I know a lot of the designers—so it seemed, you know, easy to just call them and ask them if
I could wear one of their dresses,” Kruger says of her decision to stop using a stylist in the early stages of her career. But it wasn’t all a matter of convenience. Rather, Kruger, like so many of us, is a fangirl when it comes to fashion. “I love watching the runways,” she says in an almost giddy way. “I go online, and I see all the collections, [and] I try to look out for new designers. I just love it.” Then, when an occasion arises, she rifles through her saved folders full of sartorial screengrabs, picks a look that she thinks could work, and asks the designer if it’s available. “Sometimes, it is; sometimes, it’s not. But that’s really how it is,” she says. “Sometimes, if it’s a special occasion where a designer would make something for you, that’s really fun because, usually, I call them myself, and I tell them, ‘I would love something in this vein. What do you think?’ [Then,] they make sketches, and you get to choose so many things. It’s like getting married 50 times over.”
When I liken the experience to a dream, Kruger is quick to agree: “And it still is. That’s never changed. It’s such a joy. And you know, you feel like the luckiest girl in the world.”