Auckland retail in the Qantas Travel Insider

I recently mentioned that I have started writing about global fashion retail for the Qantas Travel Insider blog. Today my mini wrap of Auckland retail went up on QTI (here). It's just a quick snapshot really, a few must-see basics for anyone who may be brand new to the city, in what promises to be a very busy year for Auckland. FYI that's James Dobson, above, aka designer Jimmy D, at the entrance to his marvellous multibrand Children of Vision boutique in St Kevin's Arcade - a shot I took in September 2009 during New Zealand Fashion Week (with most of the other images supplied by World, Kate Sylvester, Zambesi and The Department Store, many thanks to all). Feel free to add in suggestions in comments. What's your favourite Auckland store?  

Master blaster: Indie Kiwi startup asks "WTF has happened to magazines today?"

Last night, frockwriter’s attention was drawn to Master Mouse Patrol, an interesting new, free magazine from New Zealand which describes itself as "sexy, yet polite". Developed by three Kiwis - Sam Williamson, Benny Castles (whose day job is menswear director of Auckland-based fashion brand WORLD) and Richie Wildman - the magazine is edited in Sydney, printed in Auckland and designed in New York. Here is the link to the website, which adds new material on an ongoing basis and also includes a PDF of print edition one: a compendium of musings on New Zealand, Australia, travel, food, the arts, photography and a comic from Kiwi illustrator Jooles Clements. It’s the second magazine to have launched from within the NZ fashion community – after Karen Walker’s travel site, Runaway Now.

But not even Walker’s more illustrious guest contributors in the form of Sir Richard Branson and model Shalom Harlow are a patch on Master Mouse Patrol’s anonymous "fallen drag queen" scribe “Bambi”, who lets rip on a wide variety of topics and, elsewhere in the issue, plays resident Agony Aunt.

With kind permission from Bambi and Master Mouse Patrol, here is her dissertation on the state of contemporary fashion magazines, which frockwriter believes deserves far wider play. Enjoy.




WHAT THE F*** has happened to magazines today?

It’s bad enough the publisher thinks he/she/it is doing us (the reader) a favour by keeping the cover price under $10 (f***ing arseholes) in a genuine and deluded attempt to remain relevant in the market, and to keep competitive so that they can slim up to advertisers and lie that they have a readership! What readership!? Even lithium-fuelled subordinates are turning off magazines by the millions!

DO YOU know why?

Well it’s because they write shit about shit! All they worry about is getting that prestigious tampon or Gatorade advert, coupled with the drug-f***-lust for the freebee! What makes it even worse is that the freebees you are getting are so pathetic and cheap you actually don’t realise that even your advertiser hates you! You lazy Mother F***ers, all you care about is how fat you look in those jeans!! F*** I hate you so much! The reader gets a regurgitated piece of nothing filled with press releases whilst you plump your lips with free arsecream!

You fly around the planet consuming stuff and not really believing in any of it because you are basically the nerd outsider from the schoolyard that everyone hated!

Magazines were once fantasy-filled bibles of style, fashion, modernity! They allowed us, the great unwashed, to dream, to aspire, to want to work harder for a better life… OR was that all an illusion and really the fuckers never ever dreamed for us!?

I loved looking through National Geographic. Reading about exotic travels, looking at bizarre and beautiful people, things, places. Even the advertising was aspiring: Rolls Royce engines, Lufthansa flying to Machu Picchu! Or the Rolex Oyster, how it was made and how good it looked whilst scuba diving in St Tropez, ads telling you of an excellence that you may want to experience or have! Old Vogues, old any magazine were different, you know why? Well they were alive, they had a soul, the writers cared, the photographers cared, the editors cared, everyone actually cared!

It’s so simple - money was not the only frikkin object! The craft of the story, the committment to the photo, this was what mattered, the money came later! That’s why we have iconic publications (only a few), they remain beacons amongst a sea of vile, useless, fat, hideous, mundane magazines that do nothing but kill the planet!

I was recently lucky enough to meet with the Editor At Large for American Vogue, and it struck me how nothing mattered to him except the moment, the creation of the moment and the recording of the moment! Perfect for Vogue! I realised spontaneity, campness and humour all made taste and that really is Vogue. It’s an amazing formula, a recorder of fashion, he made the moment and then recorded it and off he went first class to Sydney and back home to NYC and then Paris! And here lies the thing! It’s that exact free spirit! That powerhouse of character, a career spent seeding a drag aesthetic that makes a magazine great! Remember it’s not war and peace, it’s a frikkin magazine! It is ephemeral, a thing that exists only to record the moment!

Magazines are still extremely important vehicles in connecting our planet, moving culture and society forward away from ignorance, bigotry and hatred towards Prada, Louboutin and Gucci!

But more and more I see a cancer creep into the industry and slowly killing it; this cancer of seriousness, of self-importance - and, unfortunately, there are too many mediocre people fuelled up with degrees, believing that they are the elite, the one that has the god-given right to take the freebee and then basically lie to us all about society today, distorting the truth and assassinating the moment!

I hate you all!

To all the f****ing hideous magazines that I see on the newsstands around the world I dearly hope you all go under or even better you end up under the umbrella of ACP, where your life will be a slow living hell, where even your shit has to be justified to a manager, then quantified by an accountant! I hate you all and you deserve to die!

X Bambi


All artwork supplied by master mouse patrol

Kate Sylvester's charming summer

The collection was called ‘This Charming Man’, but there was no sign of Morrissey the muso (or the Australian designer for that matter, who has nevertheless been flitting in and out of shows for the past two days). Auckland’s Kate Sylvester did however deliver yet another charming collection of her signature discreet chic. If you had tapped leather as an emerging trend of this antipodian summer season, you are not wrong. Several collections have included leather, among them yesterday’s hot newcomer Flannel and Sylvester one hour ago. Her caramel leather series included a mid calf length A-line skirt, bomber jacket and matching bustier and knickers. Also of note, soft Liberty-like florals on sweet pinafore dresses and roomy trousers – another emerging trend in Sydney – and her knit twin sets, swapping a cable knit bodysuit for a regular sweater with one pair. A little more subdued than usual - the autumn/winter 2010 collection shown in Auckland had much more attitude - but there is more than enough to keep Sylvester’s cult fan base happy. Click here to see frockwriter's Posterous pic gallery of the show. And keep up to date with our real-time coverage of RAFW via Twitter and Facebook.

Did Armani crib Elton John's sunglasses from World?

terence koh/matt williams via purple diary


“The accessories - and the crystal suit - are fantastically camp. Elvis Presley might be long gone, but there's always Elton John”. So wrote frockwriter in September 2008 after visiting the Auckland HQ of NZ fashion brand World and being dazzled by the mad Swarovski crystal-embellished suits and accessories of its 'There is no depression' Autumn/Winter 2009 collection. The collection, which had just walked the runway at New Zealand Fashion Week, had been inspired by 1970s fashion icon Tina Chow. Well blow me down with a burlesque feather if Elton John didn't turn up at last week’s Grammy Awards for his duet with Lady Gaga in a pair of dead ringers for World’s fly-like crystal-studded sunglasses.

Frockwriter missed the broadcast of the Grammys and didn’t really pay much attention to the since widely distributed wider angle shots of the duo on stage.

But we did do a double take when we spotted this very clear Purple Diary shot, above, of Canadian artist Terence Koh "wearing Elton John’s Armani Privé glasses during Lady Gaga and Elton John’s Grammy rehearsals". Koh created the spectacular piano on which the duo performed their duet.

Whether or not it's due the different angles of the two photos, there does appear to be some slight discrepancy between these glasses sported by Koh and those finally worn by Elton John on stage (below). Perhaps Armani created several versions for him to choose from.

Given that World was referencing a 1970s New York fashion scene icon for its collection, perhaps the designers had an archival shot from that era on their inspiration board that season.

But then, perhaps Armani’s haute couture atelier had a shot from World’s show on its own, who's to say?

In any event, reports World, their glasses have since been purchased by the National Gallery of Victoria and are currently on display in Melbourne.


getty via daylife


world aw09/anzfw


self portrait at world

A chat with Tokyo Dandy

After returning from New Zealand Fashion Week in late September, I had a week to get a stack of work done before starting back at Today Tonight. As a result, a lot of ANZFW material did not go up. Such as this quick video chat with Dan Bailey and Kazuaki Joe K from Tokyo blog Tokyo Dandy (who, like frockwriter, were guests of the organisers). So here it is. Apologies (once again) for the poor sound and light. At the time, we were all waiting for an audience with Pam Anderson and I had to make do with the hotel corridor - and of course my little digital camera.