In 2007, Gemma Ward was the world number one model. Three years later, three Australians are in the Top 15. What are the odds?

 
Some don’t much care for the ranking system deployed by New York-based modelling industry website models.com. On more than one occasion on this blog, critics have called out MDC's 1,2,2,3 system (or "dense" ranking, as distinct from 1,2,2,4 or "standard competition" ranking) saying it just isn’t cricket. But it is MDC's opinion and that opinion tends to be highly valued in the industry. And it's worth noting that as of 24 hours ago, in the site's hotly contested Top 50 working models section - which calculates a model's 'authority' rank via their latest blue chip ad campaigns, magazine covers, major runway bookings and editorials, as distinct from pure earnings, which is how Forbes ranks models - there are now three Australians in the world Top 15. Abbey Lee Kershaw is #5, Catherine McNeil is #12 and in the space of a fortnight Miranda Kerr has jumped forward to #15, thanks to recent alliances with high fashion names such as Balenciaga, Prada and Jil Sander (as distinct from her more lucrative commercial work with Victoria's Secret, which has earned Kerr the ninth spot on Forbes' Highest Earning Models 2010 list).  

Just three years ago, of course, another Australian made it to the number one spot – Gemma Ward. 

Given how many thousands of girls, and how many different nationalities, are in competition - not to mention the fact that you could almost fit the entire population of Australia (21.4million) into New York - surely it's no mean feat. 

Could the gumleaf fashion media mafia have anything to do with it?