Rachel Rutt, the face of summer

Who's a popular girl then? One of frockwriter’s favourite models, Sydneysider Rachel Rutt, finally looks to be getting some recognition. In May, we mentioned that Rutt had just scored her second international magazine cover – Dazed & Confused Japan, following one of 12 multicovers of the French Revue de modes in October 2009 – but had yet to make page one of any local titles. Well she more than makes up for it this month by scoring the covers of the summer editions of Australia’s Yen (below) and New Zealand’s No magazine (above), which launched today in NZ. Update 2/12: Although she is not on the actual cover of the December edition of The Australian's luxury magazine Wish, which is out tomorrow, Rutt nevertheless features in its Christmas fashion cover story. Here is a behind-the-scenes video:  

mick bruzzese/yen magazine

Shot by Ben Sullivan, with styling by Zara Mirkin and art direction by Delaney Tabron, Rutt’s No cover is part of an eight-page editorial spread (below) on Sydney label Romance Was Born.

Elsewhere in No's summer issue - which is themed around the concept of “Anywhere” - are interviews with actors Stephen Dorff, the lead in Sofia Coppola's new film Somewhere and American Beauty's Wes Bentley and singer and London It girl, Coco Sumner from I Blame Coco (the daughter, incidentally, of Sting and Trudie Styler).

all no images: supplied to frockwriter by no magazine. tks to isaac for the tip

Tom Ford recommends a head job with that boob job

tom ford for vogue paris via fashion_screen

In the much-hyped, Tom Ford-edited December 2010 edition of Vogue Paris, which is out tomorrow, Ford tackles the subject of cosmetic surgery with an eight page editorial called La Panthère ose (which translates as “the panther dares” - a play on the French version of the film title The Pink Panther). Starring the world’s most high profile plus size model Crystal Renn, the editorial was shot by Ford and styled by editor in chief Carine Roitfeld. Yes, cosmetic surgery makes an interesting editorial backdrop for any fashion magazine, considering that such magazines stand accused of only ever showcasing unrealistic – and frequently digitally enhanced – images of female “perfection” that prompt feelings of inadequacy in “normal” women and lead them to eating disorders and cosmetic surgery. But it is not the first time this has been done. The July 2005 edition of Vogue Italia featured an 80-page cover story by Steven Meisel called Makeover Madness. Shot inside a medical equipment rental facility and a suite at the St Regis, the story depicted Linda Evangelista and eight other models before, "during" and after staged procedures (complete with fake blood). It's interesting to compare the two editorials. 

The 2005 story (here) depicts nose jobs, breast augmentations, liposuction and blepharoplasty or eyelid surgery, male doctors and female nurses. 

The 2010 version (above and below) depicts exactly the same procedures, minus liposuction - and two male attendants in the place of the doctors and nurses. 

One could speculate that Vogue Paris deliberately omitted liposuction from this story because of the body image debate that has been raging since 2006, following the deaths of several models from eating disorder-related conditions. And it would defeat the purpose, surely, of having a plus-size model in the editorial? Unless that's a shadow on Renn's leg in image four, however, we would put money on her thigh having been airbrushed by the magazine. 

Renn has revealed that she wore a prosthetic mask in some pictures – presumably those showing her with grotesquely overinflated lips and acutely chiselled cheekbones. The kind of cheekbones frockwriter has spotted on more than one high profile twentysomething model.

There is one interesting addition to Ford’s cosmetic surgery story: sex.

In one shot, Renn's character appears to be on the receiving end of some oral pleasure from one model - with her left arm dangled around a second male model, who looks barely legal - while casually sipping Coke from a straw in one hand and channel surfing with the other.

Many will no doubt find Ford’s post-op cunnilingus proposition - which all looks very consensual, save for the fact that the patient requires assistance to walk and shower and would most likely be on heavy duty painkillers - funny. The score of women who claim to have been indecently assaulted by cosmetic/plastic surgeons while under sedation probably won't be amongst those laughing. Nor indeed, any date rape victims.

Another image in the series (second from the end) is ambiguous. Renn is lying in the lap of one model, who is holding an ice pack to her forehead, while the other leans over her suggestively. The latter is holding her waist with one hand, while "administering" Chanel No 5 - either orally or perhaps as a substitute for an Amyl Nitrate "popper", a hugely popular drug in the gay mens' scene.  
 
Ford aims to be controversial. After all, he is in the process of making his big comeback in women’s fashion. Besides, he has never shied from controversy, either with the advertising imagery for Gucci or more recently, through the advertising campaigns for his own brand, notably the mens’ fragrance campaign shot by mate Terry Richardson. The duo team up again in this issue of Vogue Paris in a western-themed editorial called (what else?) Pussy Western, starring Renn once again, opposite Abbey Lee Kershaw and Eniko Mihalik.  

Interestingly, Ford's cosmetic surgery story coincides with the publication of The Daily Beast’s roundup of some of the new, far less invasive cosmetic surgery procedures that are currently being hailed by various US cosmetic and plastic surgeons as having "revolutionised" their practices.

They include skin resurfacing machines that some claim have eliminated the need for upper and lower eyelid surgery and fillers that have reportedly proven to be so effective they are replacing some nose jobs and the traditional facelift – with one plastic surgeon describing the latter as “an outdated insane operation”.

all images: tom ford for vogue paris via fashion_screen

Sophie Ward and Sebastian Mader team up to create 'My Dirtied Soles'

As the countdown continues to the May 20 2011 release of Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, in which Australian model-turned-actor Gemma Ward is due to appear as a mermaid (its trailer, due for release on December 17, may well including a fleeting glimpse of same), turns out Ward’s model-turned-writer/publisher sister Sophie Ward has made a movie of her own. Or rather, a haunting “video poem” called My Dirtied Soles, that she has written and narrated and which is directed by New York-based German photographer/filmmaker Sebastian Mader. Sophie Ward is a talented writer, whose first novel, The Beginning of an Inexplicable Journey is downloadable as an e-book from her website). And as she demonstrates with this project (below), she also has a great voice - just like her sister.

screen caps 'my dirtied soles'

According to the release:

“Poetry as an art form has lived in many mediums, from the spoken to the written word. Now it moves to a new dimensions. My Dirtied Soles is a video poem born out of a vision for contributing the potency of poetic messages to human beings….. My Dirtied Soles is the first in a cycle of expressions on the journey of life itself -- on our basic needs, fears, and yearnings which speak of what it is to be a human today. Sophie and Sebastian are now working on Act II of the cycle, to be released early 2011”.

Nicole Trunfio to officially replace Miranda Kerr as the face of David Jones' winter 2011 launch

vogue italia

In July, following the news that Miranda Kerr would be skipping David Jones’ Spring/Summer 2010/2011 runway showcase to enjoy her honeymoon with Orlando Bloom – amidst a deafening chorus of speculation she was three months pregnant – frockwriter predicted that Nicole Trunfio would replace Kerr as the face of the department store’s upcoming Autumn/Winter 2011 runway showcase and that Kerr would resume her official duties for the Spring/Summer launch in July 2011. So it’s official. Today’s Sunday Telegraph reports that Trunfio will “replace [Kerr] as the star of the David Jones Winter 2011 season”. Trunfio, who is also currently profiled in a video interview on the website of Vogue Italia, was flown by DJs to Sydney this week to shoot the winter catalogue. 

vogue italia

Kerr will still have a minor role to play. 

Fairfax's rival Sunday newspaper, The Sun Herald, today published an image of Kerr from David Jones' upcoming Autumn/Winter catalogue. The shot was recently taken in LA – with a 60 Minutes crew in tow, as anyone who saw that recent interview with Kerr would recall. 

vogue australia via the sun herald

The Sun Herald also scored an interview with Kerr, who told the paper that she will feature in several images in the Autumn/Winter catalogue, but is “looking forward to coming back to support and work with DJs for the summer season and continuing in my role as fashion ambassador''. 

The Sun Herald speculates that “one or more” of the models who filled in for Kerr in July in Sydney - Trunfio, Abbey Lee Kershaw, Alexandra Agoston and Catherine McNeil – will be gracing the retailer's runway in February.

As we now know, Trunfio will definitely be there. Agoston and McNeil may be two other contenders. We doubt very much, however, that Kershaw would avail herself for this show, given that its timing will coincide with the peak of the northern hemisphere Fall/Winter 2010/2011 runway season, during which Kershaw is always in huge demand.

Evidently, one paper scored the interview with Kerr and the other, the interview with Trunfio. And it looks like The Sunday Telegraph may have felt it got the short end of the stick. 

In what reads as an extraordinarily bitchy comment, the paper notes that Trunfio “is taller, thinner and younger than pregnant Kerr”. 
 
Elsewhere in today's edition, The Sunday Telegraph also reports that yet another nude image of pregnant Kerr will be published in the January 2010 issue of Vogue Australia, whose cover she graces, noting:

“Here's a radical idea, Miranda - how about posing with your kit on for your next shoot?”

Apparently even American Apparel's store mannequins have to spread their legs

While in town for the Adelaide Fashion Festival a fortnight ago, frockwriter couldn’t help notice the front window of the American Apparel boutique on Rundle Street, the city’s busiest shopping strip. The display included one squatting store mannequin who was flashing rather a lot of va-jay-jay. Not literally, as she was wearing a pair of micro utility shorts and of course, most store dummies aren't that anatomically accurate. But anyone walking past the boutique was confronted by the mannequin's crotch and it did seem a little in-your-face. Not to mention vulgar. 

We were curious if perhaps the artful arrangement of slutty store mannequins might be part of the company’s visual merchandising handbook. A couple of calls to two of American Apparel’s three Australian boutiques bore no fruit. The staff were extremely tight-lipped. All they would tell frockwriter was that everything is managed directly from the American Apparel headquarters in Los Angeles.

But is it all that surprising, really? 

This is the very same company that has been responsible for the following genre of advertising imagery:

about-face

faxplax

district L

And after a quick net search, we managed to find several other examples of similarly suggestively-posed American Apparel store dummies.

This one was photographed inside an American Apparel factory in 2008:

tim ferriss

And this was photographed in one of American Apparel's New York stores in the same year:

vanishing new york

Here is an almost identical mannequin - let's call it American Apparel's "Bend Over and Take It Up The Ass" model - in a Toronto store window display in June this year. With the addition of some faeces, courtesy of the G20 protests.

AP via daylife

It’s not the first time that American Apparel and its allegedly notoriously touchy feely founder and ceo Dov Charney have found themselves in the poo.

Charney has been the target of numerous sexual harassment lawsuits – although apparently none of them so far successful - and the company has been targeted by numerous consumer boycotts over its "sexist" advertising.
 
American Apparel is, moreover, currently being sued by its shareholders and teetering on the brink of bankruptcy. 

Perhaps sex doesn't always sell quite as well as they thought. 

Jefferson Hack isn't the only big fashion name heading downunder in 2011

purple diary

Last night the L’Oréal Melbourne Fashion Festival announced more details of the lineup for its 2011 event, which will run from 14-20 March under a new creative director, Condé Nast's former mens fashion director Grant Pearce. Now in its 14th year, LMFF is a consumer-focussed event of in-season fashion parades and exhibitions that are open to the public. But ironically, it’s the industry-focussed Business Seminar that is arguably its hottest ticket, with a stellar lineup of speakers that has previously included former Selfridges ceo Vittorio Radice, Philippe Starck, Agent Provocateur’s Joe Corre and Serena Rees, Vivienne Westwood and last year, LMFF's first really big fashion kahuna, Calvin Klein Collection womenswear director Francisco Costa. In March, Jefferson Hack, editorial director of London’s Dazed Group, will join ACNE Studios ceo Mikael Schiller and Havas Worldwide ceo David Jones, in addition to 2011 Festival face, New York-based Australian actor Melissa George. George is a Perth native, but will nevertheless inject some Hollywood glamour into the event. 

Hack will inject the cool factor. 

A multimedia svengali who is hardwired into the indie fashion zeitgeist, Hack is now a front row fixture at every major international fashion show alongside fashion establishment stalwarts such as Anna Wintour. Even The Guardian recently asked its readers, could he be the coolest man in Britain? 

The co-founder of hipster bible Dazed & Confused in 1992 at age 19, Hack's empire now embraces Dazed Digital, AnOther Magazine and AnOther Man. Being Kate Moss' babydaddy hasn’t hurt his profile. 

Here is a taste of what the LMFF 2011 Business Seminar audience can expect: an interview Hack did earlier this year with The Business of Fashion’s Imran Amed, as part of BOF's 'Fashion Pioneers' series: 




 
There are more LMFF announcements to be made but one of them, frockwriter understands, will not be that Burberry creative director Christopher Bailey is joining the 2011 lineup. Bailey has been courted by the event for several years. 

But that’s not to say that we don’t be seeing him downunder next year. 

In April, Burberry is due to unveil a massive new 7000 square foot boutique at 343 George Street in Sydney, one of its biggest flagships in the Asia Pacific region. We hear that Bailey may be heading down to cut that ribbon.

If so, that will make April a busy month for fashion bigwigs in Sydney.

Sources at Diane von Furstenberg report that the queen of the wrap dress is heading our way in April, no doubt to officially christen her first Australian boutique that has just opened within Westfield Sydney. 

Behind-the-scenes at the Wish Autumn/Winter 2011 campaign shoot with Iekeliene Stange

Yesterday frockwriter mentioned that Australian fashion label Wish had nabbed Dutch supermod Iekeliene Stange for its Autumn/Winter 2011 campaign, to be shot by Australian photographer Sonny Vandevelde. Here is a sneak peek at the campaign shoot which is underway in New York right now, evidently making the most of the city's iconic Brooklyn Bridge. Stange, we understand, may be heading downunder at some stage in the not-too-distant future to promote the campaign. 

all images: supplied exclusively to frockwriter by sonny vandevelde/wish

A paparazzo's farewell

big australia

This coming Friday afternoon at Sydney’s Bondi Pavilion, friends and family of the late Sydney photographer Peter Carrette will gather to pay their last respects to a well-loved member of Australia’s media community. Sixty three-year old Carrette died over the weekend at his Bondi apartment/office from a suspected heart attack, almost two years to the day that another Sydney paparazzo, Dave Morgan, died in his sleep at the age of just 53. Much will be made on Friday of UK-born Carrette’s career, which spanned five decades, kicking off in a Fleet Street darkroom when he was just 15, traversing various war zones before settling into celebrity photography in Australia - with a bang. In 1969, Carrette authored what has been described as “the most audacious, arguably the most invasive, picture in Australian photo-journalism”, international sales for which reportedly netted his then employer just US$18,000 (US$104,000 in today’s currency): an image of a comatose Marianne Faithfull inside the intensive care unit at Sydney's St Vincents Hospital. Faithfull had been in town visiting her then boyfriend Mick Jagger while he was shooting Ned Kelly, allegedly caught him in the arms of another woman and overdosed on heroin. "Everyone wanted the picture - I went and got the picture" Carrette told The Sydney Morning Herald in 2005. In order to do so, he dressed in a doctor’s coat rented from the Elizabethen Theatre Trust and sneaked into the building. It might have gotten Carrette kicked out of the Australian Journalist's Association, but it's the stuff of Gonzo legend really.

the sydney morning herald

Before any official eulogies begin, some of Carrette’s mates, at once his colleagues and competitors, have already given him one touching tribute.
 
Once word spread of Carrette's death on Monday morning, they rallied together outside his Bondi apartment at the same breakneck speed at which they normally scramble to descend on any major news story or celebrity sighting. 

Then, a cadre of some of Australia’s most successful freelance photographers including Guy Finlay, Patrick Rivière, Ross Hodgson, Sam Wordley and Malcolm Ladd, formed an impromptu guard of honour to salute their fallen brother as he left the building for the final time (below).

Using their powerful zoom lenses as makeshift swords, they turned the lenses skywards for once, to cross them over Carrette’s body as it was carried out to the funeral director's hearse on a stretcher, covered in white lilies.

“It’s our guild, it's our union, it’s our way of saying goodbye to Peter” said one. 

Vale Peter Carrette.

both images: supplied to frockwriter by big australia

Iekeliene Stange makes a Wish

sonny vandevelde

A number of major modelling names have emerged from the Netherlands. They don't get much bigger than bombshells Lara Stone and Doutzen Kroes, for instance. Few have been as edgy, however, as Iekeliene Stange. Known for her killer cheekbones and elfin chic, Stange has worked with the world's biggest fashion names, most recently appearing on Christian Dior's Fall/Winter 2010/2011 haute couture runway in Paris. Right now, she is in New York to shoot the Autumn/Winter 2011 campaign for Australian fashion label Wish with Australian photographer Sonny Vandevelde. The duo will start work early tomorrow morning in and around the quaint, cobblestone alleyways of Brooklyn's Vinegar Hill district. That's Stange, above, leaving the Tribeca Grand Hotel earlier in the day. The hotel's second exhibition of Sonny's backstage images - many featuring Stange, his muse - is still in fact hanging. Great get for Wish. Frockwriter hears the company nabbed Stange ahead of another, much bigger, Australian outfit that was also trying to book her for its Autumn/Winter 2011 campaign. 

Michelle Leslie used to be behind bars. Now she's designing them

sportsgirl melbourne launch 2008/zimbio

Frockwriter was interested to spot a recent series of Tweets from Michelle Leslie, who reports that on November 12, the doors opened to a new Sydney bar whose interiors she has designed: The Winking Lizard at 28 Chalmers Street, Surry Hills (below). With its stark refectory tables, old metal chairs and murals by Sydney artist Ben Frost, the ambiance is, according to Leslie, “industrial and distressed”. To our eye, it's a little Left Bank bohemian - not to be at all confused, of course, with Third World prison common room. Leslie has more than a passing acquaintance with the latter, having spent three months in Bali’s notorious Kerobokan Prison in 2005 following her arrest in the possession of two ecstasy tablets. Five years on from her annus horribilis, the former model has reinvented herself as a creative consultant. With interior design studies under her belt from the Sydney Design School - and entertainment/marketing industry work with Peer Group Media, the company founded by her fiance Adam Zammit - Leslie has launched her own interior design and styling business called Curious & The Specimen. This follows a first foray into design with the Miyow & Barkley pet clothing and accessories line, launched in 2007 with friend Traci Griffith, the first range of which reportedly sold out. 

the winking lizard via @_michelle_lee

Adelaide's emerging designers enjoy BMWs and free rent

The Adelaide Fashion Festival appears to revolve around young designers. Its timing is designed to coincide with the graduation of final year students at TAFE SA, whose fashion campus in the CBD, incidentally, recently received a $4million upgrade. The graduates get to show their work in a big runway showcase at the Festival. Frockwriter shot the 2010 TAFE show from backstage, when we attended the first few days of the event as a guest of the organisers. Then there is the festival's gala finale, the Chambord SA Emerging Designer Award. The 2010 winner was Jaimie Sortino (below), who we just happened to meet and photograph on November 9, following the Festival's opening party. Sortino was awarded the use of a BMW for one year, which is ironic given that he doesn’t have a driver’s license. Sadly, we had to get back to Sydney and missed the closing night's festivities, but head to Sonny Vandevelde’s blog for some great backstage shots of that show. Earlier in the week we did, however, meet up with two other Chambord finalists, Julie White and Alice Rawlinson, who designs under the brand name Divine Madness (above - and below, with White), at their Hindley Street studio/boutique called Workshop. Providing yet further evidence of Adelaide’s fashion incubator focus, White and Rawlinson share the space with two other young creatives... rent free.  

jaimie sortino/chambord SA emerging designer award/sonny vandevelde

Workshop is part of an initiative called Renew Adelaide, which is based on the Renew Newcastle urban renewal program that was pioneered by writer and broadcaster Marcus Westbury in that city in 2008. Its mission statement: to revitalise the Adelaide city centre by pairing up creatives with empty spaces and abandoned buildings. Legal squatting in other words.
 
It reminds frockwriter of the Stalbridge Chambers studios in Melbourne’s Little Collins Street in the 1980s which birthed, among others, Scanlan & Theodore co-founder Fiona Scanlan, milliner Tamasine Dale and wünderkind Martin Grant, who launched his label at age 15. Also the existing China Heights collective in Sydney’s Surry Hills. Just without the overheads.  
 

julie white

divine madness

julie white

julie white