Death of a Hollywood icon

richard avedon

RIP Elizabeth Taylor.

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

Vale Richard Bailey

Very sad news about Richard Bailey, who passed away yesterday at the age of 52 from cancer. By all accounts he was working right until the end. Bailey was one of the giants of Australian fashion photography, working with every major local magazine and retailer. Based in New York for 10 years, he also worked with GQ, Vanity Fair, Vogue Italia, Glamour, Grazia and Mademoiselle and his portfolio of advertising work spans The Gap, Victoria's Secret, Anne Klein, Neiman Marcus, Bloomingdale's, Macy's, Anne Taylor, Nautica, L'Oréal and Mercedes Benz. But Bailey's biggest showcase was by far Vogue Australia, with which he worked for 31 years. You only have to check his website, to see that the local edition accounts for over half the content of his magazine covers section.

It wasn't all safe, commercial work. Tsubi's controversial 2004 'Death Machine' calendar featured Bailey's colour-saturated images of semi-clad models, including Miranda Kerr and Michelle Leslie, posing provocatively against cars and motorbikes.

The previous year, for a book called 1/1, he shot a series of edgy, black and white images of Chic Management models, to prove the critics wrong that "There are no girls [read: decent models] in Australia".

Bailey of course lived to see Australian models take the world by storm. Many of them will be toasting him tonight.

He is survived by his wife Gillian and children Billie and Jasper.

Vale.








all images/richard bailey.com.au

Malcolm McLaren was not the first British record producer to die from mesothelioma

Getty via mirror.co.uk

Pop legend Malcolm McLaren died on Thursday from mesothelioma, a rare form of lung cancer that is almost exclusively caused by exposure to asbestos fibres. To date noone has released any information indicating how McLaren may have been exposed (update 11/4: one theory is that he may have been exposed whilst refitting his King's Road shop SEX in the early '70s). But you have to wonder what, if any, role asbestos soundproofing in older recording studios might have played. One asbestos-specialist legal firm suggests it's not beyond the realm of possibility. Interestingly, McLaren is the second British music producer, and in fact the fourth recording industry professional, to have succumbed to mesothelioma in seven years. In 2003 another British producer, Mickie Most (The Animals/Herman’s Hermits/Donovan/Susie Quatro) and American singer songwriter Warren Zevon were felled by mesothelioma, with Irish singer songwriter Christie Hennessy dying from same in 2007.

Death of a pop culture genius

Sad news about the death, at age 64, of Malcolm McLaren, following a secret battle with cancer. Unfortunately I don't have the time to write a full obit, but suffice it to say he was one of the most influential cultural figures of the second half of the 20th century. To be sure, his sphere of influence was pop culture. But the Punk revolution of the mid-late 1970s, in the commercialisation of which McLaren played an intrinsic role, rattled the foundations of music, fashion, graphic design and publishing.

A former manager of The New York Dolls, McLaren's early 1970s efforts to relocate New York poet/musician Richard Hell to London proved unsuccessful. McLaren engineered Johnny Rotten and Sid Vicious instead, with Hell's spiked hair and ripped T-shirts providing what many believe was the inspiration for The Sex Pistols styling.

McLaren's (many) other music ventures included Bow Wow Wow and Adam and the Ants. And of course, he collaborated with Vivienne Westwood, his erstwhile business and life partner, with whom he also had a son, Joe Corre (co-founder of Agent Provocateur).

In this journalist's opinion, Westwood's collections were at their most subversive during the Westwood-McLaren collaboration years. Together they rocked London's Kings Road with their controversial boutiques, whose names changed from Let It Rock to Too Fast to Live Too Young to Die, Sex, Seditionaries and World's End. People were arrested for wearing Seditionaries T-shirts. It's hard to imagine today.

But the seeds for McLaren's brand of subversion had been sewn over a decade earlier, while he was an art student in London, against the backdrop of the May 1968 student riots in France. The riots themselves were rooted in the 1950s political/art movement Situationist International, of which McLaren became a disciple.

Above is an interview he did with Australia's Enough Rope program on the ABC on 10th July 2006.

Four months before that, I spoke to him backstage at Paris Fashion Week. We chatted about a number of things and I will endeavor to track down the original interview. One grab from it appeared at the end of this news story.

On the subject of artists, he told me:

"Artists have to always, always stand up and say, 'I'm not for sale' - meaning that your heart, your mindset, your artistic vision is not for sale. If that's for sale, then you're just a goddam wristwatch."

Death of an Australian fashion icon

bettman/corbis

Sonia McMahon only spent one year as Australia’s First Lady. Nevertheless, she goes down in history as the Australian political spouse with the greatest international fashion resonance and the engineer of one of this country's most iconic fashion moments. Part Princess Diana, part Bond Girl, one can only imagine the impact that the thirty nine year-old mother of three must have had on February 3 1971 when she emerged in “That Dress” at a state dinner at the White House, totally overshadowing Australia’s 20th prime minister and, presumably, the rest of the night’s proceedings. "My God, who is that?" Richard Nixon is reported to have spluttered, before noting – some three months after signing off on a covert investigations unit designed to put the kibosh on intel leaks to the news media - "I'll have her at my side. I'll have my photo in every paper in the US”.

McMahon got to wear the dress one more time in the US – thirty four years later in Los Angeles, this time on the arm of her son Julian at the Golden Globes. It was in fact a modified Jonathan Ward replica, created for Myer’s 100 years of Australian fashion retrospective.

The original dress, which is now housed inside Sydney’s Powerhouse Museum, was created by Spanish designer Victoria Cascajo, who owned a South Yarra boutique called Balencia Couture.

Cascajo worked for legendary Spanish-born couturier Cristobal Balenciaga for 10 years in Madrid (Balenciaga originally opened in Spain in 1919, before moving to Paris in 1937 following the Spanish Civil War). Upon his retirement in May 1968, Cascajo told The Age that Balenciaga taught her everything she knows.

The thigh-high split and cutout detailing under the arms and on the sleeves, however, were far more in sync with the far younger Paris guns Pierre Cardin and André Courrèges, as well Austrian-born American Rudi Gernreich. Against the backdrop of the Mod fashion revolution of Swinging 60s London, their “space age” styles influenced a generation of fashion designers the world over – including, undoubtedly, Perth’s Ruth Tarvydas, who has claimed Cascajo copied her best-selling buckle dress of 1969.

In September, Tarvydas told The Australian:

"I think her dressmaker was definitely inspired by my dress, it was obvious. (Sonia McMahon) really was the first Rebecca Twigley, she just happened to be in the White House."

A reporter for The Washington Post is said to have described McMahon's gown at the time as:

"absolutely smashing. I think the dress is a breakthrough for fashion and a blow for women's liberation."

It was, at the very least, courageous.

Vale Sonia McMahon.

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.”

McQueen jilted by Australian lover, not his first suicide attempt – The Daily Telegraph

the fashionisto

Sydney’s Daily Telegraph newspaper has added some interesting details to the intrigue surrounding the suicide of top British designer Alexander McQueen, the biggest fashion story since the murder of Gianni Versace in 1998. Citing an interview with McQueen conducted by Irish journalist Godfrey Deeny for the April edition of Australian Harpers Bazaar, the paper claims that McQueen had been recently (although it doesn't clarify how recently) jilted by an Australian lover, whose name he had tattoed on his arm. It also includes claims from an unnamed friend of the designer - as originally reported in The Daily Mail - that McQueen’s arms were covered with lacerations following previous suicide attempts and that, against the backdrop of his mother’s death and funeral, which was due to take place yesterday, he could not cope with the pressures of completing his next collection. One friend is quoted as saying, “His Paris show is coming up and his staff have been nagging him all week to get up and start working. But he wouldn't get out of bed, he just couldn't get up. He hasn't even been to any of his fittings for the show. He was so upset about his mother. It was her funeral and he couldn't face it." Hasn't Gucci Group heard of bereavement leave?

Vale Alexander McQueen

kin ho

A tremendous loss to the fashion world, Alexander McQueen has committed suicide at the age of 40. The British designer was found dead this morning in London, reportedly by hanging. The news follows just nine days after the death of McQueen’s mother Joyce. Three months after the suicide, also by hanging, of South Korean model Daul Kim, a favourite of McQueen. And three years after the suicide of close friend, British stylist Isabella Blow, who launched McQueen’s career in 1992, after purchasing his entire graduation collection from Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design.

Born on the 17th March 1969 in London’s East End, the son of a taxi driver and a social science teacher, McQueen made clothing for his sisters at an early age, before leaving school at 16 to pursue an apprenticeship on the hallowed tailoring ground of London’s Savile Row, where he worked for Anderson & Sheppard and later, Gieves & Hawkes. While at the latter, McQueen famously penned the words "I am a cunt” in biro into the lining of a suit destined for Prince Charles. In 2003 he nevertheless accepted a CBE, “for my parents” he told SHOWstudio.

McQueen also worked briefly for the London costume supplier Angels & Bermans, where he worked on productions such as Les Mis, in addition to fashion houses Koji Tatsuno and Romeo Gigli. In 1990 he was offered a highly coveted place in Saint Martins’ MA design course - after initially being knocked back for a patternmaker tutor's job for which he had applied at the college.

In 1993 McQueen launched his own label with a small collection in the Bluebird Garage on the King’s Road, Chelsea. His subversive edge was evidenced from the get go, with the launch collection including a skirt emblazoned with images of an electric chair.

The Fall/Winter 1995/1996 Highland Rape collection, which featured torn bodices and tampon string-festooned skirts, garnered controversy. Accused of misogyny, McQueen said it was an artistic statement on the rape of the Scottish Highlands by the British.

In 1998, he was obliged to change the name of one show – The Golden Shower – after objections by sponsor American Express. Models walked through water illuminated by yellow light with horse bits in their mouths.

In 1996, after just eight collections, McQueen was appointed creative director of the French haute couture house of Givenchy, where he worked for four years producing both ready to wear and haute couture.

In December 2000 – the same year he began showing the Alexander McQueen collection in Paris - McQueen sold a 51% stake in his company to Gucci Group. This enabled him to build a global brand that now embraces boutiques, perfume and accessories. In 2008, the company finally turned a profit.

In addition to a CBE, McQueen was named British Designer of the Year four times between 1996 and 2003 and also the CFDA’s International Designer of the Year in 2003.

McQueen will be remembered as a creative genius, who pushed the concept of the fashion show to its greatest contemporary heights.

Yes his tailoring was exceptional. Beyond the razor-cut day suiting which made his name, he introduced the term “bumster” to the modern fashion lexicon: trousers cut so low they exposed bottom cleavage.

But arguably McQueen’s greatest legacy is his extraordinary showmanship which has influenced a generation of designers. After seven years of highly imaginative shows in London, his theatrical vision was finally fully realised thanks to the deep pockets of Gucci Group.

Notable productions include Spring/Summer 2004's They Shoot Horses Don’t They and the Fall/Winter 2006/2007 Widows of Culloden show, at the conclusion of which McQueen blew his audience away with what many described as a life-sized holographic image of Kate Moss (the bridesmaid at McQueen’s 2001 wedding to George Forsyth).

In fact, as McQueen’s longtime stage designer told me backstage at his Spring/Summer 2008 show, it was a Victorian era illusion called Pepper’s Ghost.

In March 2009, set against a backdrop of garbage and featuring wildly theatrical makeup and styling, the breathtaking Horn of Plenty show provided a mini retrospective of McQueen's best-known work.

McQueen's last collection, presented in October 2009 and titled Plato’s Atlantis, will be his epitaph.

The collection was inspired by his love of scuba diving (he also had a passion for ornithology from a young age, which may partially explain his love of costume feathers). The futuristic production, which was live streamed to the net, featured models wearing sculpted minidresses emblazoned with multicoloured reptilian prints - but most notably, 12-inch platform booties that McQueen called “Armadillos” which have since been widely photographed.

As revealed by this blog in December, models Abbey Lee Kershaw, Natasha Poly and Sasha Pivovarova refused to walk in them.

Frockwriter predicts McQueen's mourners will be wearing them to his funeral.

The Sunday Telegraph: The disturbing trend of model deaths

daul kim, backstage @ alexander mcqueen SS08

On November 20th I - along with many others - blogged about the very sad news of the death of South Korean model Daul Kim. The news was all the more alarming by virtue of the fact that Kim's was not an isolated death in the modelling industry - or indeed suicide. As regular readers of this blog would be aware, I have been tracking some of these stories over the past twelve months. Sydney's Sunday Telegraph newspaper asked me to develop the post into a small feature (which they titled "Dying for success"). Many thanks to models.com's Wayne Sterling, Sophie Ward and Vikki Graham for availing themselves for interviews at short notice. Here's the story (which ran last weekend):

THE fashion industry has been rocked by the death of top South Korean model Daul Kim, the latest in what has emerged as a disturbing trend of model suicides over the past 18 months.

The 20 year old was found hanged in her Paris apartment on November 19th, the third model suicide since June 28 2008, when Kazakh model Ruslana Korshunova, also 20, died after falling nine floors from her apartment building in New York.

On October 11 2008, 26 year-old Canadian Hayley Kohle fell seven floors to her death from an apartment building in Milan.

Although Kohle was one of many virtual unknowns struggling to make names for themselves in a fiercely competitive business, both Korshunova and notably, Kim, had achieved far greater success, securing magazine covers and lucrative advertising contracts.

And yet both Korshunova and Kim also left a trail of social networking site posts behind them talking about heartbreak, loneliness and depression, with Kim already once having to defend her mental state on her two year-old blog I Like To Fork Myself.

On October 11, just one month before she died, Kim even used the terms “cut ur wrists”, “jump out a window” and “cry for help” in a blog post called “Say hi to decided”.

“The industry is definitely in shock over the news of Daul Kim's suicide” said Wayne Sterling, a prominent New York casting director and the editorial director of the website models.com, whose closely-followed world rankings of models are considered the industry’s unofficial benchmark. “People are asking...How could we have missed the signals? There have been a lot of tears and some guilt about all of our superficial assumptions”.

But the suicides are part of a wider pattern of recent model deaths that have many asking about the hidden risks and dangers of an industry that remains largely self-regulated.

Not counting the eating disorder-related deaths of three South American models in 2006, which reignited the Size 0 debate and prompted a raft of industry initiatives, on July 7 last year Canadian Diana O’Brien was murdered while on assignment in China.

Then on October 11, coincidentally the same night that Hayley Kohle died, 20 year-old male American modeling star Randy Johnston died from a heroin overdose in Connecticut.

“We all have to accept that yes there is a serious problem” said Sterling.

“Common decency now would demand that designers, editors, photographers and agents should address signs of depression and fatigue and stress in young models as clear problems that could amplify with tragic implications” he added. “We're dealing with human beings here, not inanimate mannequins”.

Speculation is currently focused on the mental health of Australian modeling star Catherine McNeil, who was photographed last week in Sydney with a series of mysterious cuts on her arms.

McNeil’s mother contradicted the official statement from Australian agency Chic Management, that the cuts were the result of a skateboard fall, by stating her daughter fell down stairs and has also been “depressed”, with McNeil’s grandmother adding that Catherine is “burned out” by the industry.

Chic Management declined comment for this story on either McNeil or Daul Kim. Chic’s New York affiliate Next Models was Kim’s American agency.

"This was the tipping point - enough is enough now" said Australian model and author Sophie Ward of Kim's death.

Ward has experienced the modeling rollercoaster both first-hand and through the eyes of her sister Gemma Ward who, by early 2007, had risen to the world number 1 position, before disappearing from the business altogether following a segue into acting and the January 2008 death of close friend Heath Ledger.

“Without a strong sense of identity, I think it's very easy to lose oneself in the demands of a million people, and forget who you even were to start with” said Ward. “Yes I went through dark stages of existential doubt but I wouldn't call it depression, it didn't last as long”.

“Of course my family were vital, but you can't survive in a hotel room with just a telephone, or a blog. You need many voices, many hands, all around you, to get your mind off those pressures, and enjoy life".

Sydney’s Scene Models director Vikki Graham conceded that although she believes agents are not therapists, the size and pressures of the business and the speed of communications have helped depersonalize the industry.

“Models don’t come into the agency like they used to before, now every model’s got a BlackBerry - but a BlackBerry doesn’t tell you whether they’re feeling down in the dumps” said Graham, who also believes agents should be both aware if there are personal issues affecting a model’s work and prepared to cancel jobs.

“They’re not machines” she added. “There are times when they can’t do a job. The model has to take priority over the booking”.

Why is Daul Kim the fifth model to die in 18 months?

Condolences are due to the family and friends of Korean model Daul Kim, who has died in Paris (on the 19th) at the age of 20. Details have yet to be clarified, but New York magazine’s The Cut is reporting suicide (since confirmed by South Korean consular officials). This is yet another very, very serious wakeup call for the modeling industry. It is the fifth model death of which this journalist is aware since June 28 last year - three of them allegedly suicides.

On June 28 2008, Kazahk Ruslana Korshunova fell to her death from a New York apartment building. Although ruled a suicide, a petition was launched to attempt to have the case reopened.

On July 7, Canadian Diana O’Brien was murdered while on assignment in China.

Then on October 11 – yes, on the same night – American Randy Johnston died from a heroin overdose in New York, while Canadian Hayley Kohle fell to her death from a Milanese apartment building. Although Kohle’s death was ruled a suicide, her family also raised questions.

Kim will be remembered not just for her brief modeling career. (I met and photographed her backstage, above, at the Alexander McQueen show in Paris in October 2007).

Kim was also a sensitive and creative soul, who was quite outspoken and raised eyebrows on her two year-old blog, I Like To Fork Myself. There was the time she called out Japanese fashion brand Undercover for being racist. And another occasion when she gave Barneys the finger (literally, in a photo) for its poor customer service.

Some of Kim’s musings were however quite dark and on several occasions she found herself having to defend her mental state on the blog.

In April 2007, shortly after she launched the blog, Kim wrote:

“and thanks to stupid tv show from korea ppl think i like to
torture myself and thanks to that im getting lots and lots of
suicide emails on a daily basis
but im definately not depressed, and i dont want to killmyself”

In October 2008, after hamming it up with some mates in some photos, and censoring some of them after complaints from her mother, she wrote:

"thank you but
i dont care

and i was not high or drunk
i dont even smoke cigarettes.
i go to bed early and i dont party. i rave at home.

but my mother emailed and told me that she is upset and
worries about my mental state so its censored.

i listen to my mother.

i am okay im just having fun with my french gay boys...."

In this very bleak post "Say hi to decided", dated 11th October, Kim's fate looks to have been sealed.

It's a pity that her family and agents did not realise how depressed and lonely she was until it was too late.

RIP Daul Kim.