Ajak Deng: Civil war survivor, aspiring supermodel, breadwinner for eight

david jones SS1011 backstage

Frockwriter was preoccupied with a fulltime gig during the Fall/Winter 2010/2011 season, so we missed quite a bit of news. Including two new rising Australian modelling stars, Adelaide’s Emily Wake and Melbourne’s Ajak Deng. We did include one mention of Deng in our preliminary SS10 Australian model wrap just after New York Fashion Week, her first international show season, in which she did just a handful of New York shows (and we originally got her surname wrong*). However it was during the Fall/Winter 2010/2011 shows in February and March when Deng really grabbed the industry’s attention, walking in over 20 shows. These included blue chip names such as Lanvin, Givenchy, Jean Paul Gaultier and Chloe – the first black girl to walk the latter’s runway in nine seasons in fact, prompting New York Magazine to ask in June, “Could Ajak Deng be the next Alek Wek?”. Like Wek, Deng is a Sudanese refugee. But while Wek’s family fled the war-torn African nation for the UK, Deng’s family settled in Melbourne in 2004 – among an estimated 23,000 Sudanese refugees who arrived in Australia from 2002-2007. Sixty-two percent are aged 24 and younger and 45percent of the settlers are believed to be female. Like Wek’s story – which Wek recounted in her autobiography in 2007 – Deng’s story is remarkable. The second of eight children, Deng lost her mother to malaria at the age of 12 while living in a Kenyan refugee camp and took charge of her infant sister. Three years ago her father moved back to Sudan and her stepmother left to join him. Since she was 16, Deng has been financially responsible for her seven siblings.  

david jones SS1011

Interestingly, Deng is the second Australian model with a refugee background to break through on the international fashion stage this year. 

Andrej Pejic’s family fled war-torn Bosnia for Australia in the 1990s, coincidentally also settling in Melbourne. After a successful Paris menswear season in July, Pejic prominently features in a 16-page editorial in this month’s Vogue Paris.  

(top to bottom) lanvin FW1011, chloe FW1011, valentino haute couture FW1011/all images style.com

However Deng is by no means the only Sudanese model working in this market.

Over the past eight years a number of Sudanese refugees have emerged on Australian runways at Australian Fashion Week, the biannual David Jones and Myer shows, L’Oréal Melbourne Fashion Festival and Melbourne Spring Fashion Week. * Confusingly, their first names tend to begin with the letter “A” and there was even another Ajak Deng modelling at one point, prompting Deng’s mother agency FRM Model Management to initially change her name to “Angelique”. 

The Sudanese Australian fashion contingent includes Ajak Nyariel; Atong Tulba; Akuol Ding; cousins Akeer Chut-Deng, Atong Maluck and Abang Athow and now also Deng’s 18 year-old sister Zahara, who began modelling two months ago, also repped by FRM.

Deng was signed to IMG Models in New York last year and now features on its prestigious main Womens board, as opposed to the "Development" board. 

Since her breakthrough season earlier this year, she walked in several Resort 2011 shows in New York in June and several haute couture shows in Paris in July - notably Valentino. She also booked the Spring/Summer 2010 campaign for Benetton, Topshop’s Fall/Winter 2010/2011 campaign and has just shot for Banana Republic and Nordstrom. She was also featured in the controversial ‘Let’s Get Lost’ editorial spread in Interview magazine in June, alongside a black cast and one white model. Deng told New York Magazine that she didn't think there were any "racial overtones". 

But Deng hasn’t been quite so diplomatic when describing her modelling experiences in the Australian market. 

Although very grateful for the opportunities that life in Australia has afforded her family - "In Sudan, all this would have been impossible. It is just amazing" she told The Herald Sun – Deng recently told Vogue Italia that she believes she has experienced discrimination on modelling jobs in Australia.

In a Vogue Italia video interview with former model Bethann Hardison, the founder of Bethan Management, co-founder of the Black Girls Coalition and an advocate for women of colour in the modelling business, Deng reported that she has been told by some Australian fashion players:

“Sorry you’ve come such a long way, but we don’t use black girls”. 

Considering that she has been working for two years essentially part-time while she finished school, Deng’s Australian body of work nevertheless embraces three David Jones shows, the L’Oréal Melbourne Fashion Festival, Melbourne Spring Fashion Week, New Zealand Fashion Week, advertising campaigns for Mimco, Davenport, Bardot and Leluu and editorials in New Zealand’s Pulp and Black magazines and the Australia titles Vice and Cream. 

No editorial, however, in any mainstream fashion publication and no Rosemount Australian Fashion Week. Why no RAFW? According to FRM, last year’s event clashed with her school timetable and although Deng was booked to work at RAFW this year, the Topshop job in London came through at the last minute and took priority. 

The Spring/Summer 2011 season commences next Thursday in New York. Alongside numerous other Australian models, Deng is there attending castings. Frockwriter looks forward to seeing her build on her success. 

I caught up with Deng at the David Jones Spring/Summer 2010/2011 show in Sydney on August 3rd. She had just arrived that morning on a flight from the US, where she had been shooting the Banana Republic campaign. It was a fairly noisy background and the sound in places in patchy.




 

jean paul gaultier FW1011/style.com

I read that you have been responsible for your seven brothers and sisters for the past three years. How could you possibly look after them at the age of 16 when you were still in school?
Ajak Deng: Well when I was in highschool, I was getting payments from Centrelink and I was being paid as a parent for my little sister and my little brother. Now .... she’s eight years old, I was told ‘Oh well we’re not going to pay you as a parent, but we’ll pay you as a worker’. As a carer.

How old are your brothers and sisters?
They’re 18, 16, 15, 12, 10 and eight years old. The oldest is 21. But he’s not really doing anything. Under me there are six.

But you’re responsible for everyone?
Yeah.

So how do you do that with your modelling income?
If I have anything then I have to spend it on them and the house but at the moment I don’t have anything because I’m kind of running around the world.

It’s a lot of responsibility for a 19 year-old. Have you met any other models in similar situations?
No, all of them are pretty much responsible for their own money. When they get paid, they go shopping, they buy that and that. I’m like, I can’t do that. Instead of wasting all my money on shopping, I’ve got got to make sure that I...my family. I might keep a tiny little bit to spoil myself.

In the Vogue Italia interview with Bethann Hardison, you mentioned problems you had working as a model in Australia.
I said, ‘I don’t want to think about it as a hard industry, I just want to go out there and do my thing’. A lot of people think ‘Oh I’m a black model, this is going to be impossible’. For me, I don’t want to think like it is impossible. There’s nothing impossible, as long as you put yourself out there.

You told Hardison that Australian fashion industry figure/s had told you, “Sorry they sent you all the way here, we don’t work with black models”. Which shows are you talking about? Do you remember any names? I only did one show last year, during Melbourne Fashion Week. I only got to do one show last year.

Do you think Australians are racist? You have otherwise obviously been welcomed into Australia as a refugee.
We’ve been welcomed but at the same time, once you try to do something good it’s just.. nobody is really accepting you. They’re just like... Oh yeah, like ‘Good luck’. But they don’t welcome you. Like for example when you’re doing a show, [and people are] taking pictures, they don’t really bother to take a picture of a black model. Like a closeup makeup [portrait]. They don’t do that. Whereas in New York, they do that, they don’t mind. They take a photo of any girl with her makeup on. Whereas here no, the girls they know, they take a picture of those girls and they just leave you out. They don’t really care. They walk past you and nobody really cares. I don’t really mind about that as long as I’m doing the show.

You have been having some tremendous success overseas. Amusingly, a lot of people can’t seem to help commenting on the length of your legs.
Everybody says that. They’re like, ‘Damn, those legs are long!’

Do many people make comparisons to Alek Wek?
Trust me, over 200 people in Europe or in Paris would think I’m always Alek Wek. I walk down the street and [it’s like] ‘Oh my God, are you Alek Wek?’ I’m like, ‘I’m not her but thank you very much’. She’s a supermodel, it’s great to be compared to her. But I don’t really mind.

Has Alek Wek been an inspiration for you?
Yeah, very much so.

How did you start modelling? Were you scouted?
No, I actually joined modelling school. Tanya Powell. I did Tanya Powell for like two weeks and after that I got my little photos together, so I went to FRM. And I asked them, I want to be a model. And they wanted to charge me.... I didn’t have much money after modelling school. So I joined this [other] guy as my personal manager... After New Zealand Fashion Week, Melbourne and various jobs that I did that were paying well.... he kind of just ripped me off and changed his address and phone... Totally just abandoned me. So he hasn’t paid me my money, took my portfolio, changed his address, is nowhere to be found.

How much money does he owe you?
Around $8000. He did this to three models.

Who looks after your brothers and sisters when you’re not there?
My step mum [according to FRM she travels backwards and forwards from the Sudan]. I hope she’s not going to leave again because if she leaves, I can’t go back to work.

Well congratulations. You are doing incredibly well – at the same time facing challenges that few, if any, other models have to face.
It’s crazy. When I travel and I go around the world, I’m like, ‘What am I doing here and where do I go from here?’ It’s totally different from Melbourne. But I’ve been to like four or five countries already so far,  so I’m like ‘Wow, that was good - in less than eight months’.

 

Givenchy's gender bender

mert + marcus via givenchy

With all the buzz about androgynous Oz model Andrej Pejic at the recent Fall Winter 2010/2011 menswear collections in Europe, it's been easy to overlook Givenchy's intriguing FW1011 womenswear campaign. It's not news - WWD reported it back in May - but alongside several high profile women, including Australia's Catherine McNeil (below), Givenchy creative director Tisci also cast his longtime muse, assistant and fit model, transsexual Lea T, nee Leo (second on the R, above). “She’s always been very feminine: superfragile, very aristocratic” Tisci told WWD. That was until Vogue Paris just published the following shot of Lea in its August edition. (warning NSFW).

paris vogue via the imagist, fashin

In an accompanying interview, Lea tells Vogue that it was Tisci who originally encouraged her to cross dress, suggesting she bleach her eyebrows and wear "drag queen heels" to a party one night.

The evening proved a "revelation", apparently prompting her subsequent decision to live as a woman, one that has not been without some pain, she reports, referring to discrimination faced out in public and also within her own family.

Lea is now repped by the Women model agency, appropriately enough, and since the publication of the Givenchy campaign, has been busy with bookings.

She is awaiting a "definitive intervention" (read sex reassignment surgery) which will "liberate her femininity".

Suddenly the womens collections and the mens collections seem to be blurring into one...

mert + marcus for givenchy via wwd

Bluralism, apparently now also a legit advertising medium

etro via TFS

Each time frockwriter has brought this subject up over the past 15 months, it appears to have rattled the cages of the flat earthers, who like their photography crystal clear. The deluge of blurry images taken on cellphones at Rosemount Australian Fashion Week in April 2009 - christened "Bluralism" - was denounced as "a demonstration of the failure of new media". Three months later, when we reported that New York’s Stephen Weiss studio had staged an exhibition of artists' cellphone images, one commenter noted “New media is an interesting, rapidly expanding force... but how does this compare to that of other entities that actually create imagery that has a lasting impact culturally”. What to make, then, of the Fall/Winter 2010/2011 advertising campaign from Italian fashion brand Etro, which bears a distinct resemblance to blurry, amateur, backstage cellphone photography? Irrespective of whether or not a cellphone was actually used for the job, or the effect was achieved in post-production, that's precisely the look Etro appears to have been trying to achieve. Those crazy Italians. Further details on the campaign, ie names of the relevant creatives, have yet to emerge.

all images: etro via TFS

BVLGARI's LOLCATS

Leos don’t start celebrating their birthdays until later this month, so what’s with all the lions? After last week’s eight tonne, 40-foot golden lion presiding over the Chanel haute couture show in Paris – closed by Karl Lagerfeld muse Baptiste Giabiconi in a stuffed lion’s head – comes the Fall/Winter 2010/2011 campaign for Italian luxurygoods brand Bulgari. We’ve already seen American actor Julianne Moore nude in Bulgari’s Spring/Summer 2010 campaign, paired with a couple of Australian sulphur-crested cockatoos. For the winter campaign, which was also shot by renowned fashion snapper duo Mert Alas and Marcus Piggott and is due to break in September issues, Moore teams up with a couple of adorable lion cubs. No idea what PETA has to say about it but if the cubs could speak, the expressions on their faces seem to be saying "MEH".

all images: supplied to frockwriter by bulgari (whose trademark FYI, carries a roman "V" instead of "u" - only when the name appears in capital letters)

Yes, Emma Balfour did shoot Céline's Fall/Winter 2010/2011 advertising campaign

212 @ modernparty.cn via the fashion spot

On June 1, frockwriter mentioned that our well-placed sources had spotted veteran Australian model Emma Balfour shooting the Fall/Winter 2010/2011 campaign for French luxury brand Céline in New York alongside at least one other model. The first images of the Juergen Teller-lensed campaign have just surfaced and voilà Balfour, together with Martiniquais/French model Sigrid Agren (below). This is a huge coup for Balfour, who popped back up on the modelling radar in September 2008 during New York Fashion Week in the Marc Jacobs and Alexander Wang shows. Pushing 40, she was old enough to be the mother of her teen runway colleagues. By the Fall/Winter 2010/2011 season in February/March this year, which boasted Stella Tennant, Kristen McMenamy and Elle Macpherson, among others, Nineties modelling faces had made a small, yet significant, return to the runways - not to mention the ad pages. Here is 39 year-old Tennant in Balenciaga's FW1011 campaign.

Jean Paul Gaultier's Perla

Turbans were piled high, shoulder pads took on lives of their own – right down to the elbow - and Dita von Teese stripped down to a black beaded corset, thong and suspenders on the runway – all to promote, presumably, a new collaboration between Jean Paul Gaultier and Italian luxury lingerie brand La Perla. Call it Marlene Dietrich with multiple personality disorder, Gaultier’s haute couture offerings, just off the runway in Paris, were a mixed bag of Forties Hollywood glamour, Lido showgirl and Mortitia Addams. As with Dior’s floral extravaganza on Monday, colours were intense, from poison green to chartreuse, cobalt blue and orchid. It now remains to be seen which contemporary Hollywood icons have the chutzpah to pull these looks off on the red carpet. Head to Now Fashion to see the complete collection.

Seven years after it had three photographers jailed for posting runway images online, the Fédération Française de la couture has joined Twitter

In 1868, Paris-based, British-born couturier Charles Frederick Worth (above) established the world's oldest fashion week organising body, the Chambre syndicale de la confection et de la couture pour des dames et fillettes. It was the precursor to today's Chambre Syndicale de la haute couture Parisienne, the governing body of the haute couture industry. In 1973, with the advent of the ready to wear collections, the latter was integrated under a new peak fashion body: the Fédération Française de la couture, du prêt-à-porter des couturiers et des créateurs de mode. Well stop the press, the Fédération is now on Twitter. Although its Twitter feed appears to have been active since January (it boasts a mere 170 followers) with a Facebook page added around the same time (2000 friends), over the past 24 hours Twitter and Faceboook buttons have been added to the schedule section of the body's website. Fascinating to see this august body move into the 21st century.

One of Worth's primary objectives in organising Parisian couturiers was to counteract copying. More than one of the Fédération's members have, over the years, banned journalists from their shows, fearing the leaking of intel.

Until as recently as the 1990s, moreover, the organisation imposed a three month embargo on the publication of all colour images of the Paris collections, in a bid to allow the fashion houses time to make their collections before the copies arrived in store.

And who could forget the copyright brouhaha of 2003? In March 2003, in the middle of the Fall/Winter 2003/2004 Paris show season, photographers Don Ashby, Marcio Madeira and Olivier Claisse were arrested, jailed and subsequently prosecuted for what the Fédération described as the “illicit traffic” of runway imagery on their pioneering Firstview.com website.

The case was led by the Fédération in collaboration with several houses, notably Chanel, which had taken exception to Firstview posting its own images of a Chanel collection on the Firstview site. In France, picture rights belong by default to the designers, not photographers.

Incarcerated for two days in a Parisian prison, the trio was eventually cleared of the charges in 2005.

Even in 2007, things still seemed a little twitchy in Paris. I found myself without Paris show accreditations for two seasons, after shifting my accreditation from The Sydney Morning Herald print edition to its online arm, smh.com.au and then again six months later, when I moved to News Limited's news.com.au.

The last three years has of course witnessed an avalanche of social media. Trying to keep a lid on things with Twitter, Facebook and live streaming now in full force at every fashion week, would be like trying to shut the proverbial stable door after the horse has bolted. That said, without individual invitations from designers, it remains to be seen how many independent bloggers would be accorded official Paris accreditations.

In terms of speed to market with show images, Condé Net's Style.com used to be first up with runway images - the day after each show. 

Now, in a bid to keep up with the rapacious appetite for runway information, Style.com has taken to putting up images before its show reviews are even posted. 

But even Style.com and co can't keep up with new players such as Now Fashion, which is publishing lowres runway images in (almost) real-time from the end of the runway, providing a far better vantage point than that of most show attendees who are uploading images on Twitter.

If Now Fashion can get images up that quickly, you have to ask, why can't the mainstream crew? 

Abbey Lee Kershaw walks Chanel (again), makes world number 6

chanel haute couture FW1011/getty via daylife

The haute couture shows roll on and overnight, to the best of frockwriter’s knowledge, Abbey Lee Kershaw was the first Australian model to pop up therein – at Chanel. This is no surprise, as Kershaw has spent the past eight months forging a powerful alliance with the iconic French couture house and its German creative director, Karl Lagerfeld. Kershaw closed Chanel’s Spring/Summer 2010 haute couture show in January, opened its Fall/Winter 2010/2011 ready to wear show in March and appears in both the Spring/Summer 2010 ad campaigns for Lagerfeld’s own collection and the Fall/Winter 2010/2011 Chanel campaign. Back in December, during an interview for Australian current affairs program Today Tonight (only a fraction of which made it to air) Kershaw told me that she was moving on from Italian luxury goods house Gucci, with which she had booked four campaigns – although in everything other than the Flora by Gucci campaign, as part of a group of bigger name models. But Kershaw’s star is definitely on the rise. Since December, beyond her Chanel coups, she has appeared on ten magazine covers. Today Tonight asked, could she make it to number 1? Well she's getting closer - models.com just upgraded her ranking to world number 6.

Click here to see more of Chanel's sumptuous haute couture collection on Style.com. And here is a video shot by Bryanboy from his front row seat:




WWD appears not to have included the couture shows as part of its regular free runway show coverage, so see Style.com also for highres of Armani Privé, Christian Dior and Givenchy. The Givenchy collection (that was inspired by Frida Kahlo and Mexico's Day of the Dead) is particularly beautiful: a tightly-edited presentation of heavily-embellished, mermaid-like sheaths in white, ecru and gold.

So which other Australians are in town for the haute couture?

Stephanie Carta has been Tweeting from fittings, although it’s not clear which shows she is up for.

Last weekend, Carta mentioned she was at the Elie Saab studio and several weeks ago, made reference to Karl Lagerfeld’s “black bride”, although whether this was second-hand info from someone who did attend a fitting or something sighted in the Chanel atelier for either the show or a private client is also unclear. Perhaps Lagerfeld changed his mind - his FW1011 bride overnight was in traditional white.

Priscillas reports that its white hot new faces Julia Nobis and Emily Wake are both confirmed for today’s Valentino show.

The shock of the nude at Armani Privé

There was no sign of Lady GaGa, either in the flesh or spirit, at Giorgio Armani's Fall/Winter 2010/2011 haute couture presentation, which concluded a little over an hour ago. GaGa has become something of a walking endorsement for Armani's haute couture line, decked out in Armani Privé for various appearances (and undoubtedly paid a handsome fee to do so). But there were no one-shouldered unitards or globe dresses in Paris today. Instead, a suite of softly-draped, ladylike - and a little Versace-esque - suits and shifts in biscuit colours, sculptural duchess satin sack dresses and signature embellished sheaths. The latter, sure to turn up on another Armani acolyte, Cate Blanchett. Once again, as the highres shots roll in, here are a few of the real-time runway images captured by Now Fashion. Head to the website to see the rest of the collection.

Christian Dior's little shop of haute couture

Highres images have yet to go up on the main sites and the real-time images via Twitter were few and far between. But behold the Christian Dior Fall/Winter 2010/2011 haute couture collection which has just walked off the runway in Paris, via Now Fashion, a website which publishes runway images in real-time. Glorious colours, theatrical styling, the show was literally set in a garden in Paris (visible in some shots through a plastic tent structure behind the rows of seating) and appears to have been inspired by exotic hothouse flowers. For images of the complete collection head to Now Fashion.

Julia Nobis has big feet

Yes we know she has a huge future ahead of her. A Calvin Klein exclusive at New York Fashion Week will do that for you. But apparently Australia's hottest new modelling face, Julia Nobis, also has rather large feet - US size 11 according to her Sydney mother agency Priscillas (or a US size 12 according to other sources, with some suggestion her shoe size might have precluded her being cast in some FW1011 shows). So big, that Calvin Klein was obliged to make up some custom fit shoes for her to wear for its February 18th show, according to Calvin Klein. Above is a shot of Nobis' dress rack, from backstage footage filmed by Today Tonight, showing her two changes of footwear for the show.

Today Tonight goes backstage at Calvin Klein

This story went to air on tonight's show. With Calvin Klein Collection womenswear director Francisco Costa and executive vice president global communications Malcolm Carfrae both due to speak at last month's L'Oréal Melbourne Fashion Festival, it seemed like the perfect opportunity to show both in context in New York. After quite some negotiation, a freelance New York crew was booked and they shot at the February 18th shows (Calvin Klein has two, back-to-back - one for press, the other buyers). New York Fashion Week regulars would be aware that although the backstage areas at many shows are often crawling with camera crews, a couple of shows tend to be like Fort Knox. Calvin Klein arguably at the top of that list. I did the master interviews in Melbourne, just prior to the LMFF launch. Sadly the story did not get to run in the LMFF leadup.

I had no idea that Julia Nobis was even in the show until after it finished, otherwise I would have asked the crew to talk to her. And FYI "Yag-a-chiak" is the correct pronunciation of Jac's surname. I checked with Australia's Polish Chamber of Commerce.

I produced/wrote the story. Sally Obermeder reported and Damian Moncrieff edited.

Just a word on the intro and plasma screen graphics.

Producers are required to provide a sample intro for the anchor to read prior to each story, which is often tweaked further up the line.

Mine did mention all the Australian connections, ie in PR, the models and also the celebrities (Naomi Watts and Isobel Lucas were in the front row at the first show, with Melissa George turning up at the afterparty). Somehow, by the time the intro got to air, it had managed to morph into "Australian chiefs" being the "driving force" behind the company.

Unless Calvin Klein Inc president Tom Murry happens to have some antipodian ancestry, this will of course be news to Phillips Van Heusen.

But look, any more Australians on board and there could be a takeover.

A chat with Michael Angel

This blog has talked about New York-based Australian designer Michael Angel on several occasions. First, when his collection popped up in US Vogue, before there was a peep out of its Australian counterpart (which has yet to cover his work, reports Angel). Then we interviewed him via phone backstage, moments before he opened New York Fashion Week. Frockwriter just returned from a Calvin Klein dinner at Cutler & Co in Gertrude Street, Fitzroy, where we finally got to meet Angel in person. Calvin Klein Collection designer Francisco Costa and the company's head of communications, Malcolm Carfrae, will both talk at the L'Oréal Melbourne Fashion Festival's Business Seminar on Friday. Later today, Angel will take part in something called the Designer Forum. Here's a preview of a few points he will be discussing. The only quiet place we could find was the loo - hence the dim lighting - so we locked ourselves in one cubicle and filmed away.

Elle Macpherson closes Louis Vuitton

louis vuitton FW1011/getty via daylife


Well we can add Elle Macpherson to the list of Australian models walking in Fall/Winter 2010/2011. Returning to the runway after what frockwriter estimates could be a 20 year hiatus (the last time we recall seeing Macpherson on a catwalk was the Bicentennial Wool Collection in Sydney in 1988), she closed Louis Vuitton's 1950s-nosed collection yesterday in Paris. Although not technically the last show of the season - that was Miu Miu last night - it was a fascinating climax to a season marked by its interesting show casting. Much has been made of the "curvier" models on show alongside the stock standard teenage skeletors, even though the Victoria's Secret Angels who appeared at Prada and Balenciaga are still whippet thin. But the choice of 46 year-old Macpherson, after Calvin Klein cast fortysomethings Kristen McMenamy and Stella Tennant, alongside 33 year-old Kirsty Hume in New York, with McMenamy also showing up at Viktor & Rolf last weekend, seems more a victory for the older woman, than her curvier cousin.

Alexander McQueen's final collection saluted in camera by "all who loved him"

WWD twitter


Frockwriter predicted that an Alexander McQueen show would go on in Paris on March 9th. It concluded several hours ago. Perhaps not on the original scale planned by McQueen prior to his death on February 11th, but in its place, a sobre, dignified presentation of just 15 showpieces in a gilded salon, according to WWD, which uploaded one shot to Twitter. At time of writing it had been viewed over 3,000 times. Although you can see photographers in the background, it is unclear if they were working for the house. Reportedly, the latter is due to supply press images, with all other photographers banned. Update: Here are 11 of the (in fact)16 looks. Which is not dissimilar to the way the Paris fashion show system used to work way back in the mid 20th century. A second presentation will, by all accounts, take place tomorrow, the final day of the FW1011 season, which commenced with the terrible news of McQueen's suicide. In closing, frockwriter would just like to share the following comment which was left on our original post yesterday. It’s anonymous, so obviously we have no idea about the identity of its author. But we would like to believe that it was genuinely one of McQueen's colleagues:

“I have worked with Alexander McQueen for 10 years. Out of respect for the man, the person, and all of those who are still trying to come to terms with Lee's untimely demise, the brand will not be putting on a blow out catwalk show, but will indeed present the collection (which was indeed already cut and finished) in a very intimate setting as it is sure to be emotional for all who loved him. The brand will go on, not in Gucci's bid to cash in, but as all of us who had the joy and pleasure of working with Lee remain committed to building our brand, and carrying on his legacy.”

Viktor & Rolf's Freaky Saturday

Alexander McQueen might be gone, but we still have a a couple of showmen/women left, Viktor Horsting and Rolf Snoeren at the top of the list. The Dutch duo is renowned for the theatricality of its shows (which frequently upstage the actual collections). Some experiments have gone wrong – a case in point the Fall Winter 2007/2008 show from three years ago, in which models were forced to walk the runway in bizarre metal light rig harnesses. Noone ate the catwalk and just as well, as they could have seriously injured themselves. The duo was subsequently widely accused of misogyny (a common criticism of McQueen). Here is the post I did from that show from Paris for smh.com.au. No such criticism of Saturday’s show, which is being billed as one of the best of the season, if not the best.

The collection, called ‘Glamour Factory’, was set against a monchromatic backdrop painted with graphics of industrial cogs.

The predominantly black and grey collection would most likely have passed largely unnoticed had it not been for the clever staging, which starred 43 year-old American model Kristen McMenamy in her second runway outing this season, after Calvin Klein's show in New York three weeks ago.

McMenamy wore 23 looks. All at once.

Piled, Russian doll-like, under layers of coats and dresses, she walked to a rotating disc in the middle of the runway and stood there like a store mannequin, while the designers peeled off the layers right down to a nude-coloured corset.

As the duo undressed McMenamy, they dressed each of the remainder of the model cast – every last one of them, as per usual, young enough to be McMenamy's daughter - in her discarded clothes. Think Jamie Lee Curtis and Lindsay Lohan in Freaky Friday, just swapping sporty fur-lined anoraks, tweed boyfriend jackets and bodysuits, satin smoking jackets and LBDs, instead of minds.

By all accounts, McMenamy was re-dressed in the garments as the models returned from their turns on the runway.

The climax was delivered by way of a giant panniered skirt which was inverted and transformed on McMenamy via a drawstring, to a cape with a behemoth Elizabethan collar.

You had to be there obviously. But for everyone who wasn’t, the above video gives a taste. Here is the entire collection in photos.

Needless to say, no backstage dressers were required.

Lauren Brown bags Balenciaga

nowfashion.com

Well Priscillas is having a great season. Frockwriter mentioned that the Sydney agency had three hot newcomers heading to the FW1011 show season. In addition to Christina Carey - who walked in the Marc Jacobs show in New York. And now, after Julia Nobis landed a Calvin Klein exclusive in New York, comes word (confirmed by Priscillas) that Lauren Brown has just walked in another equally prestigious show: Balenciaga. Fantastic get for Brown and Priscillas, which is presumably having a terrific day, following the news that a model Priscillas and its New York affiliate Elite unsuccessfully attempted to sign after Australia's Next Top Model Cycle 5 - Cassi van den Dungen - has just flown back to Oz after missing out on one of Paris Fashion Week's most high profile shows. With Brown apparently having already appeared at last week's Emporio Armani show in Milan, it does not appear to have been a season exclusive. Priscillas reports that Brown has been confirmed for only one other Paris show, as the arrangement with that show and Balenciaga was "semi exclusive" (ie in Paris). It's not the first time a Priscillas model has walked Balenciaga. Stephanie Carta made several appearances. But it's interesting that the agency didn't tip any media outlets in this leadup - as it did with Nobis in Milan, at least according to Pedestrian.tv, which ran a story about Nobis' future coup. Fortunately for Nobis, it didn't kill the option.

Balenciaga packs it in for Fall

nowfashion.com

Reportedly inspired by packing materials and the work of American photographer Irving Penn and French video artist Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, here are the first shots of Balenciaga’s Fall Winter 2010/2011 collection which just walked the runway in Paris. Both wildly colourful and intellectual - with Australia’s Miranda Kerr walking for the second consecutive season, as tipped by frockwriter, alongside Australian newcomer Lauren Brown - the collection was a futuristic mélange of embellished knit tunic dresses; graphic, colourblocked sweaters over lace-look bellbottom clamdiggers with turnups; sculpted charcoal suiting with origami panelling; and an intriguing series of what appeared to be skinny-legged, ski bib n'brace-look overalls in black and gunmetal grey. The zippered bodices of the latter peeled down to create trapeze-shaped, trompe l'oeil 'tops' out of the lining, which was emblazoned with newspaper graphics. The late, great Alexander McQueen once said he dressed women in "armour". Nicolas Ghesquière just bubble-wrapped them.













nowfashion.com

Cassi van den Dungen takes one step back from her model dream

IMG

Are you ready for the next installment of the Cassi van den Dungen rollercoaster? Sadly this one ends with her 33,000 feet somewhere above Central Asia on a plane en route to Australia. Yes as frockwriter types, van den Dungen is winging her way back downunder, having failed to book a single show at Paris Fashion Week. No interest? Nothing could be further from the truth. Frockwriter can reveal that she was heading to Paris Fashion Week on option for an exclusive. Indeed a tremendously prestigious Paris Fashion Week exclusive which, if secured, would have undoubtedly launched her international career. She didn't get it. Even after three meetings with the design house and casting director. Now anyone who knows anything about the modelling business knows that this could have happened to any girl. There is however a little more to this back story, so buckle up.


Last month frockwriter reported that van den Dungen was heading to Paris Fashion Week for the shows, having been signed to what’s called the Paris “Development” board of the world’s biggest modelling agency, IMG.

IMG did not, however, broker the option.

That was already organised. All IMG had to do was manage van den Dungen once she landed in Paris – taking, of course, their percentage.

Work Agency made the decision to send van den Dungen for the entire week of shows after word of the exclusive started leaking back in Sydney – much to the surprise of the agency. It’s unclear who talked but frockwriter has her suspicions. The idea of sending van den Dungen for the week, one assumes, was that if she didn't get the exclusive, she might still get the opportunity to do other shows.

That was the theory anyhow. Things didn’t quite go to plan.

What happened after van den Dungen arrived in Paris is really between her and her agents. And it would have stayed that way had it not been for the extremely unfortunate fact that whatever did go down, she talked about it on Facebook.

It’s unclear when the following comments were made, but they were both posted on the RTV Games reality tv web forum on the 23rd February.

The anonymous poster – who some have suggested may be a former ANTM competitor of van den Dungen’s – could barely contain their excitement vis-a-vis the Facebook discovery.

They noted:

“annnndddd CASSI DOES IT AGAIN!!
shes chucked a tantrum and is coming home from Paris.. her and her boyfriend have made posts saying how much they hated paris and they are coming home and couldnt stand the people and how IMG just isnt before.
so once again another wasted opportunity!

did anyone else guess this would happen?
so much for being mature and ready!!!!”

Before cutting and pasting the following comments, apparently directly from van den Dungen’s and Brad Saul’s Facebook accounts:

“Cassi Van Den Dungen: coming home tommorow all these people are ****ed in the head the agency is trying to run me not the other way round i should be the boss ahh well IMG isn't the agency for me yay i miss my dog10 hours ago · Comment ·LikeUnlike · View Feedback (3)Hide Feedback (3)
Cassi van den Dungen i'm not upset infact im quite happy i dont like these frog eaters and snail slurpes anyway
9 hours agoCassi van den Dungen ohhhh and the frasians (french asians) are idiots
9 hours agoBrad Saul and they cant drive this one frasian couldnt get out of a parking space and kept reversing in to the cars infront and behind him funny ****

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Brad Saul is coming home tomorrow fukn french people are ****ed up and arrogant10 hours ago · Comment ·LikeUnlike · View Feedback (1)Hide Feedback (1)
Brad Saul and rude and perverts and they just stare at ya i swear to god im am going to lose it with one of them soooooon lol”

With extraordinary efficiency, the Facebook comments were then circulated to at least another three web forums, including high profile fashion forum The Fashion Spot.

Forum users apparently couldn’t get enough of the drama, with pages of new posts generated.

Some expressed their incredulity and disappointment at the news, from van den Dungen’s own beestung lips, that she was upping stumps and heading home a week before the Paris shows had even begun.

Many, however, slammed van den Dungen for making what they deemed to be highly offensive and “racist” comments and for screwing up, they claimed, yet another opportunity.

Some have also expressed their surprise that van den Dungen was accompanied on the trip by her boyfriend, as distinct from the Work Agency booker who was originally supposed to chaperone her.

Sydney's Work Agency has worked with van den Dungen for the past eight months with, it seems, not a single step out of place. In hindsight, it seems unfortunate that she wasn’t also accompanied to Paris by a chaperone from the agency with whom she had at least some semblance of a working relationship.

Frockwriter got wind of the drama on Thursday evening, but it wasn’t until Saturday that we managed to reach van den Dungen’s agent to confirm the story.

Anyone who checked the original Paris post would have seen several new comments about the Facebook incident and an update from me, confirming that she had not left Paris but was still attending appointments. Whatever drama had transpired earlier in the week appeared to have blown over. Not so the online commentary however. Sources indicate that IMG was pretty pissed off about it. Even so, van den Dungen subsequently popped up also on IMG's New York Development board - only to be removed several days later (she remains on the Paris board).

It’s this blog’s understanding that van den Dungen did not have her final meeting with the fashion house in question until Saturday or Sunday (ie February 27/28). After not getting the exclusive, IMG made the decision to send her back to Australia. We understand van den Dungen was “devastated”. She boarded a plane on Tuesday.

Couple of points here.

There are no doubt plenty of people who are thrilled with the news that van den Dungen failed to launch this week in Paris.

Indeed, many have expressed their hatred for her on the abovementioned forums. It’s been a fascinating read actually. Beyond cutting-and-pasting her private Facebook comments into other forums, moreover, some of those parties have also been busy little beavers trying to make sure the story gets wider play by emailing at least one newspaper reporter.

Frockwriter was planning to do an update once we definitively knew that van den Dungen was on the plane.

The irony of this latest Facebook drama won’t be lost on ANTM co-hosts Charlotte Dawson and Alex Perry, who of course slagged van den Dungen off on their own Facebook accounts late last year, only to find those comments similarly spread across the internet at breakneck speed.

Just on the “racism” aspect – on which van den Dungen already stands condemned - let’s put that up for discussion here.

Frockwriter was unfamiliar with the term “frasian” and when we did a quick net check, all we could find were references on the Urban Dictionary suggesting an equivalent to Eurasian or one newspaper story, referring to French/Asian fusion cuisine. If it's a racial slur, we're not familiar with it. Similarly, van den Dungen's enemies appear to be insinuating that by “snail slurpes” she may have meant snail “slopes”. These parties are not, presumably, the slightest bit interested in entertaining the possibility that it could have been an innocent misspelling of “slurpers”. Childish, yes. Racist? Not so sure about that.

As for van den Dungen airing her agency business with her Facebook mates, there is no question: massive mistake.

Why didn’t the agency make her available for other shows once the exclusive fell through? Good question. She was, after all, in Paris and there is some suggestion that other parties were interested in her, but she was listed as “unavailable”. Which of course she was up until last weekend.

Probably not the wisest political move to complain about the French in the same breath as you critique your Paris agency.

Suffice it to say however that frockwriter has not met many people who returned from spending time in France without complaining about French arrogance (including this writer, who lived in Paris for three years).

Indeed, books have been written about French arrogance. The French government commissioned a report into its own reputation for arrogance. And the French have been called much worse things than frog eaters and snail slurpers. Try "cheese-eating surrender monkeys" – a phrase originally coined by The Simpsons and which found its way to, among other places, page one of The New York Post.

As noted, lots of girls have been optioned for exclusives and failed to secure them. Not necessarily because they are the embodiment of the anti-christ.

Sometimes there’s just a better girl. This seems particularly true when agents blab to mainstream media outlets before shows. It happened to both New Zealand’s Olivia O’Driscoll and Australia’s Georgie Wass with the Prada show. Clients and casting agents appreciate discretion - not a media circus.