Catherine McNeil is a Kiwi

timo weiland's twitter

Catherine McNeil is one of Australia's best-known modelling exports. The winner of the 2003 Girlfriend Model Search, at age 14, McNeil debuted on models.com's prestigious Top 50 Women list at number 26 in early 2007, the year her international career was springboarded via covers of both Vogue Paris and the American V Magazine. But who knew McNeil also had New Zealand citizenship? Apparently not even some in her Australian mother agency, Chic Management, until frockwriter's phone call this afternoon enquiring about an image of McNeil that was just taken by New York-based designer Timo Weiland and published on Twitter. In the rather unflattering shot, a cigarette dangling from her lips, McNeil is holding what looks to be a bottle of Corona beer in one hand and a New Zealand passport in the other. The Brisbane suburb of Coopers Plains is clearly stated as her place of birth, which would give McNeil automatic Australian citizenship by birthright - although that said, due to changes to Australia's citizenship legislation in 1986, only if one parent was an Australian citizen or had permanent residency. According to Chic Management, McNeil's maternal grandmother is a Kiwi and McNeil's mother spent many years living in New Zealand. We await further information.  

But what of McNeil's modelling career?

We know she recently defected from Chic's New York affiliate Next Management to Ford (and sources claim she recently attempted to move back).

Yesterday British magazine Love Tweeted a much prettier image of McNeil (below), with the caption "Catherine McNeil is back!" - suggesting that perhaps McNeil may be about to be featured in an upcoming edition of the magazine. 
 
If Catherine McNeil is "back", then for the moment that is apparently news to some in the industry, notably models.com. Although by July last year, McNeil had risen to the world number 12 spot on MDC's Top 50 Women list, in the interim she has progressively slipped further down the rankings, only to be totally wiped off the list altogether in recent weeks. 

love magazine's twitter

 
Australian model-turned-actor-and blogger Tanja Gacic recently asked me if models are "fair game". 

Gacic mentioned that she had first heard about frockwriter via the controversy arising over several posts which discussed the antics of several Australian models in their down time, out and about in nightclubs and at parties.

I assumed she was talking about posts such as this and this.

My response to Gacic: models are public figures. It is their choice to pursue high profile careers. This blog covers fashion news. Not all of it is going to be good. To quote a cliché, we don't make the news, just report it.

If you are a model and you going to allow yourself to be photographed off duty and you know that these images are destined for the public domain, then it's worth bearing in mind that they are likely to be scrutinised. And it's probably not a bad idea to think about your image. Because the prestige brands that you are hoping will pay you big bucks to be their ambassadors take theirs pretty seriously. 

Zanita Whittington shoots a Puma

It’s a trend that is, increasingly, bound to get up the noses of some professional photographers: self-taught snappers with blogs nabbing lucrative commercial contracts that might have gone elsewhere. Notable examples include Scott ‘The Sartorialist’ Schuman shooting for Burberry, among others and Jak & Jil’s Tommy Ton shooting for Sergio Rossi and Lane Crawford. In Australia, joining a list that already includes Hayley Hughes’ Windsor Smith advertorial and Matt Jordan’s campaign for Orri Henrisson, comes model-turned-photoblogger Zanita Whittington’s new e-lookbook for Puma Australia. Starring Tania Pozzebom, it features product that is exclusive to Puma’s concept stores in Sydney and Melbourne, including Alexander McQueen for Puma, Puma by Hussein Chalayan, Rudolf Dassler Shufabrik and Mihara Yasuhiro. Here is a first look. The Puma gig follows twelve months after Whittington was tapped as a face of US sportswear giant American Apparel, the news of which unleashed a mini storm of controversy over AA’s claim that it only ever uses non professional models.

images: zanita whittington for puma/supplied exclusively to frockwriter by puma

Onya Anja

solve sundsbo for muse magazine fall 2010/touch puppet

Where didn’t frockwriter's interview with world number 3 Anja Rubik go last week? From New York Magazine’s The Cut to The Huffington Post to Vogue UK, Grazia UK and Elle US...not counting a score of other blogs, we lost track in the end (and thanks to Next Management's Stephen Lee for the hookup). Not surprisingly, everyone seized on Rubik’s revelation that she turned down Terry Richardson’s 2010 Pirelli calendar because she was uncomfortable with his aesthetic – which in her own words, borders on “vulgar”. It was a great kickoff to the New Year for this blog, as it rapidly approaches the one million visitor mark. On Monday 3rd January, we were extremely honoured to be featured on the website of hot New York-based Nepalese designer Prabal Gurung, as part of his blogger series (which has previously profiled The Cut’s Amy Odell, Fashion Toast’s Rumi Neely, Nylon’s Faran Krentcil, Fashionista’s Lauren Sherman and Papermag’s Alyssa Vingan). Then on Friday, frockwriter was blog of the week on new UK online magazine Motilo. Many thanks for thinking of us. Rubik, FYI, capped off a week's work in the outback with Vogue Australia with a big bucks shoot for a Polish jewellery brand up at Sydney's Palm Beach over the weekend our sources report. 

Stella McCartney for Target redux - two weeks in, already marked down

As reported by frockwriter on October 1st, the second Stella McCartney for Target Australia collection was due to launch in 102 stores on October 29th. Last Thursday, Target told Ragtrader that 20percent of the stock had sold out on its first day and that the company was “extremely pleased” with the reaction. Five stores were singled out for special mention, where the 42-unit range had reportedly performed the best. Adelaide's Target Rundle Street, slap bang in that city's busiest shopping precinct, clearly was not one of them however. Because when frockwriter was in town last week for the Adelaide Fashion Festival and checked the store on November 9th, it looked to have almost the entire collection still hanging - and noone looking at it. Five days later, at Westfield Bondi Junction in Sydney – one of the stores flagged by Target as having experienced the highest demand – we couldn’t help but notice this 20percent off banner, top, in the middle of McCartney’s section. And this is what the Stella McCartney section looks like today in Target Rundle Street (below) - after the entire McCartney promotion was moved away from the front of the store to join the rest of the womenswear offer, reports our SA fashionista-on-the-ground, Selena Battersby.

target rundle street, adelaide, 18th november/selena battersby

To be fair to Target, there was one garment that we could not find in either of the two stores we checked – the heavily embellished sheath dress – so we have to assume that was one of the first items to go. Update 1836 AEST: One reader reports via Twitter that that particular dress was never produced due to manufacturing issues. The dress is no longer included in the Stella McCartney collection images on Target's website. In the FAQs section, Target notes "due to unforeseen circumstances the flower sequin embroidered dress is no longer available". 

Still, we also feel the need to point that some fashion enthusiasts say they were unaware that the range was even at Target. 

Could this perhaps have had something to do with the fact that Target took its time to promote the launch to the mainstream media?

As reported by frockwriter, the fashion editors of at least three major Australian newspapers received neither an invitation to the October 1st unveiling in Sydney, nor even a press release about the imminent launch. 

Six bloggers, on the other hand, were invited to attend on October 1st, with several parties flown in from interstate. As part of a special promotion, the bloggers were required to produce two sponsored (ie paid) posts apiece - with copy approved by the client before publication.

One of the newspaper editors who did not receive materials regarding Stella McCartney for Target 2010 until much closer to the launch date, recalled their experiences with Target's PR division following the release of the company's first McCartney collab in 2007. 

At the time, newspaper reporters who don't have to have their copy approved by anyone other than their editors, reported that initial consumer hysteria had turned to disenchantment - with surplus stock left hanging in many stores and some consumers returning goods.

"They [Target] went into lockdown mode" the editor told frockwriter.

Boutiques.com: Downunder's biggest fashion blogger buddies up with Google

gala darling

The countdown is on to tonight’s unveiling of Google’s new Boutiques.com fashion portal. After revealing the name and details of the site’s looks-matching technology, frockwriter thought we would hone in on one last, local, element: New York-based Kiwi Gala Darling. Frequently cited as one of the world’s most influential fashion/personal style bloggers - who calls her blog "The playgirl's guide to radical self love” and claims it boasts close to a million individual page views per month - Darling is one of a dozen fashion bloggers invited by Google to curate their own virtual fashion boutiques. Update 18/11: Now launched. Click (here) to check out her boutique and see who else is involved. Not bad for a magenta haired, tutu-rocking, tatt-emblazoned self-help dilettante, who launched into the blogosphere in December 2006 with a post entitled “Fashion help for recovering Goths”. Those in her native Wellington might know her better as Amy Paape. Reportedly a graduate of that city’s Chilton St James and Samuel Marsden Collegiate Schools, she moved to Melbourne in 2006, legally changed her name that year, then decamped to New York in 2008. Retail, as it happens, runs in the Paape family. Darling’s mother, Janet Paape, operates a Lower Hutt fashion boutique called She Designer Excitement, while her Porsche-racing uncle, Digby Paape, sells highend audio equipment at Bose Wellington. 

Darling is far and away the most successful fashion blogger to emerge from Australasia. 

Not surprisingly perhaps, she has attracted plenty of haters along the way. Their biggest beef? Just how she earns her income.

A backlash began in 2008, after a series of blog profiles on her attracted a large volume of negative commentary. The more charitable observations slammed her as “shallow, selfish and a user”, “a FRAUD” who “lives off her parents money”, “a spoiled rich hypocrite” and “a trust fund ditz”.

Darling has responded by saying she is entirely self-funded. 

gala darling

No doubt it is difficult for some to grasp just how much money successful fashion bloggers and other online personalities are currently able to command.

The higher the traffic, of course, the higher the ad revenue. However advertising is just one facet of their revenue streams.
 
Darling started selling podcasts in March 2009. The series is called Love & Sequins and costs US$12 per podcast, including a 10,000-word transcript. Darling told the Evolving Influence fashion blogging conference at New York Fashion Week in September this year that at the time she launched the series, podcasting began generating more income than any other blogging-related activity she had previously undertaken. 

Darling also does commercial collaborations. On her blog, she discloses that in 2010 alone, she has worked with Estee Lauder, Juicy Couture, Coach, JC Penney, Ralph Lauren and Jeff Silverman - last month, unveiling a shoe she designed for the latter manufacturer. Here she is in the Coach Christmas campaign:





Then there are public speaking and appearance fees. Frockwriter has heard of day rates starting at US$2,500 and going as high as US$15-20,000 being offered to some of fashion's new media-specialist high profilers in various markets around the world.

As one of Boutiques.com's invited blogger curators, Gala Darling may be earning, we understand, a one off (low) five figure fee. 

Suck it up, haters. Then shop her look. 


 

More Boutiques.com: You can also shop their looks for less

 
Yesterday frockwriter revealed the name of Google’s new fashion e-tail venture Boutiques.com, which is launching tomorrow in New York. It was in fact a world scoop........by about 40 minutes (WWD had a page one story in yesterday’s edition). Today we can add some more info. The site, we understand, is moving very rapidly towards the unveil and its offer now embraces boutiques curated either by - or around - 76 celebrities, 27 retailers, 55 designers and 12 bloggers. But the list of designers simply reflects those names who have thus far, apparently, agreed to participate in the venture. A designer directory lists over 200 designer names (including Australians Bassike, Willow, Thurley, sass & bide, Lover and Ksubi). But even that doesn’t embrace the full scope of the Boutiques.com offer, because products from a raft other brands and outlets that are not, it seems, officially involved, are also featured. They include US-based fast fashion chain Forever 21, the bête noir of the US fashion industry, which has been the target of numerous trademark/copyright infringement lawsuits initiated by US designers - including participating Boutiques.com designers Diane von Furstenberg and Anna Sui. 

How are these non partner brands involved? 

From our understanding, by recommendations - from, for instance, the bloggers and notably, via Google’s own in-house curation using the image-matching technology it acquired from Like.com in August. 

Like the $1365 Alexander Mcqueen dress with trompe l’oeil jewelled bodice recommended by The Cherry Blossom Girl? Adjacent to that image, Boutiques.com throws up an array of what it is calling “visually similar” garments at varying price points, which click through to the plethora of online retail partners that are paying a fee to Google to be featured (plus, one assumes, a commission). As we noted yesterday, these include Shopbop, Nêt-à-Porter, Nordstrom, Selfridges, Bluefly and, yes, evidently also Forever 21.

Beyond mere trend matching, frockwriter will be curious to see if Google plans to moderate any direct copies of its designer partners' products that might pop up in the search fields. 

The Boutiques.com launch coincides with the possible imminent implementation of some rather groundbreaking new federal IP legislation in the United States: the Innovative Design Protection and Piracy Prevention Act. The first statutory protection specific to fashion designs, the bill was introduced in August, reportedly has bipartisan support and may be passed by the year's end.

If passed, the legislation would provide designers with three year copyright protection on all fashion, accessory and eyewear items from the moment they are first promoted in public and it is fully supported by the Council of Fashion Designers of America, of which von Furstenberg is current president. 
  

composite: frockwriter

James Varley shoots Trimapee

trimapee AW11 lookbook shoot/jamie wdziekonski 

Frockwriter predicted it wouldn’t be long until new Chadwick glamour boy James Varley added to his newbie model portfolio. How does a full page feature in Melbourne’s Age newspaper sound? That’s what Varley scored on Friday, in Jan Breen Burn’s great piece entitled Beautiful Boys. Most of the story was about Australia’s latest supermodel-on-the-cusp – androgynous Melburnite Andrej Pejic – but Varley was quoted in the story and prominently featured photographically, epitomising what Chadwick Melbourne director Matthew Anderson coined as the new “femiman” look. Well Varley is about to further add to his book. This morning, in Melbourne, he is shooting the Autumn/Winter 2011 lookbook for Trimapee, the four year-old label from Mario-Luca Carlucci and Peter Strateas. Lensed by Christian Blanchard, the lookbook also features new girl Kate Clements from Giant. Here is a sneak peek at the preps – and some of Trimapee’s new season leather. Follow Trimapee’s new marketing dude, blogger Jamie Wdziekonski, on Twitter for real-time updates throughout the shoot.

Boutiques.com: Now you can shop their look............. on Google

On Friday, an anonymous New York fashion PR who calls him/herself No bullshit (actual Twitter handle @NoBtotheS) Tweeted “Breaking news: google is launching an ecommerce site with shop in shops by major designers #google #theyrgonnabepissed #geturshopon”. The Tweet prompted a flurry of coverage, with the penny apparently then dropping on all those who had received invites to Google’s “High Tech Fuses with High Fashion” party this coming Wednesday in SoHo, that the launch revolved around fashion e-tail. In fact, it had already been reported that Google planned to upgrade its shopping services to better compete in the US$140billion e-commerce market by deploying the image-recognition technology of recent acquisition Like.com to enable consumers to do comparison shopping. “We are hosting an exclusive fashion party to celebrate our partners” is all Google would tell WWD on Friday re the launch (see invitation below). Well frockwriter can fill in a few blanks. Our sources say that the new Google fashion initiative is called Boutiques.com and boasts not only online boutiques selling merchandise offered by various designers and retailers, but a large number of curated "boutiques" selling the looks worn by celebrities and other influencers.

wwd

 
There at least 19 participating American designers, from Prabal Gurung to Oscar de la Renta, with participating retailers including Shopbop, Nêt-à-Porter, Nordstrom, Selfridges and Bluefly. 

The featured celebrities include Lady Gaga, Victoria Beckham, Emma Watson, Sarah Jessica Parker, Anna Wintour, Rachel Zoe and even Michelle Obama. 

These high-profilers, presumably, have no idea they are included in the mix – they are simply being used as style inspirations for Google's designer label boutiques, as curated by Google insiders, who pull together products with a similar look to those sported by the celebs. No different to your regular “Get her look” feature in any fashion magazine in other words... except that in this case, you will be able to buy the product on the spot, with Google pocketing a percentage of sales. 

Did we mention bloggers? 

A handful of high profile regulars have, we understand, been invited to curate their own Boutiques.com boutiques – in exchange for a one-off payment of (low) five figures.

Boutiques.com gets Google into the highend fashion shopping game – seven months after rival eBay launched its own fashion microsite. One facet of the latter is Fashion Voice, which includes recommendations from six US stylists: Annabel Tollman, Britt Bardo, Estee Stanley, Karen Bard, Kate Young and former Sex and the City stylist Rebecca Weinberg.

Although Google is the world’s biggest search engine, it has thus far lagged behind in the e-commerce stakes. The company launched Froogle in 2002, rebranding it as Google Product Search in 2007 – which, although seeing a 123percent spike in activity to 226 million searches in the third quarter of this fiscal year, remains dwarfed by eBay and Amazon. 

Google's online payments system Google Checkout did not launch until 2006, eight years after the launch of PayPal, which was acquired by eBay in 2002 and is now the market leader.

photo composite: frockwriter

Cash for comments: The fashion blogosphere's liquid bonanza

stella mccartney for target australia launch, sydney, october 1st/little black book

They are literally throwing money at bloggers at the moment in Australia. Not in the traditional advertising sense, whereby a marketer pays to take out clearly-delineated advertising space in your publication. In fact it’s almost impossible to find many, if any, bloggers who are earning a living out of legitimate display advertising. No, affiliate marketing (pay per click or pay per buy) and sponsored, advertorial posts are the way of the world right now (although not on frockwriter, just to clarify once again). Westfield is currently recruiting a blogger for a 12-month, $100,000 contract. One of the finalists is 19 years old. That’s an extraordinary salary for a teenager. We mentioned the recent Target Stella McCartney launch for which six bloggers (pictured above, details below) were flown to Sydney and paid to write approved copy. 

Remuneration in these situations usually depends on web traffic, but in general terms frockwriter understands there are Australian fashion bloggers earning up to $900 per sponsored post under these sorts of deals (and just to clarify, there is usually a sponsorship disclosure eg "Sponsored by Nuffnang" at the top of the posts). With your average blog post not exceeding 400 words, many a mere 200 words, that’s potentially $2-4 per word. The average freelance journalist would be lucky to get $1/word for work in Australia at the moment, with even some prestigious newspapers offering as little as 50c/word for the privilege of having your byline in their publication. 


The latest blogger cash bonanza is a project called Lustable from online payment service PayPal. According to PayPal, five Australian bloggers including Matt Jordan, Phoebe Montague and Candice DeVille are each being given $1,000 cash a week for 12 weeks to spend at their discretion on PayPal – and to talk about it on the Lustable website. 


The bloggers are not, we understand, under any obligation to write about the project on their blogs.

PayPal is referring to the bloggers as "editors", disclosing that it has "cashed them up" and that there is no copy approval.

The money is being deposited into their PayPal accounts and we understand that what the bloggers purchase, they get to keep. What happens if they don't spend all the money and siphon some of the funds out of PayPal into their bank accounts, like a salary? Good question. Apparently there is nothing in writing stopping them from doing this.

But just a reminder that there is no such thing as a free lunch.

PayPal will presumably be writing your names down on its books as suppliers and the ATO will presumably regard this as income. And needless to say, if you were to blow 12K on non legitimate business expenses such as clothes, cosmetics, jewellery and accessories, then you could ostensibly wind up with a hefty tax bill on the other side. That will of course be of little concern to PayPal.

Happy shopping.

Main image: L to R: Style Melbourne, Fashion Hayley, Little Black Book, Drop Stitch, Sassi Sam, Karen Cheng.

Stella McCartney for Target redux

You've had three years to recover from the first Stella McCartney for Target Australia hysteria. Gird your loins for SMFT Mark II. In what could best be described as a Target-ed launch tonight, the Australian discount department store invited six local bloggers to the Altona mansion in harbourside Point Piper, to unveil the fruits of its second Stella McCartney capsule collection. The interstate bloggers were flown in and put up overnight at a 5 star. Noted one invitee, Sam Winter aka Sassi Sam, "we were treated like rock stars". Frockwriter wasn't there, but we can confirm that the fashion editors of at least three major Australian newspapers not only were not invited, they were given zero information by Target about the launch. Nevertheless Grazia Australia broke the news on Twitter and has a story next week (update 02/10: vogue.com.au and The Sydney Morning Herald both have the story today - although info for the SMH story was not provided by Target). The bloggers report they are being paid to write posts and must submit copy for approval. While they're busy doing that, here is a first look at the 42-piece collection (which is already on Target's website), to be sold in 102 Target stores and online from October 29. It ranges from $20 for a headband up to $299 for a silk dress and includes some kickass cropped cigarette pants, blazers, skinny jeans, tulip skirts, lace and satin blouses and some quite beautiful dresses, including one French blue lace cocktail dress with sweetheart neckline and a heavily-embellished shift. 

And good news for larger sizes: although the size 16 merchandise in McCartney's first Target collection appeared to languish on the sales racks at the end of the season - prompting Target to make its subsequent Zac Posen capsule collection up to a size 14 only - everything in this collection does appear to range from 6-16. 

Although the designer was not present, by all accounts, the launch was in typical Stella style: tableaux of fresh-faced models milling around in the gear, taking high tea. 

all images: target australia

London Fashion Week, New Zealand Fashion Week - and a sneak peek at World Autumn/Winter 2011

 

Another day, another Fashion Week. Yes, New York Fashion Week wraps today, giving the most gung-ho fashionistas/os the chance to hop the red eye to London for tomorrow’s kickoff of London Fashion Week, which runs September 17-22. Here is the British Fashion Council schedule, with some collections at Somerset House and others off-site. Here is the digital schedule of shows to be live streamed. And here is the On/Off schedule (an off-schedule event staged in Bloomsbury). Vis-à-vis Australians, jewellery designer Jordan Askill will present a film on Friday 17th at 15.00, with sass & bide showing at 17.45 that day and UK-based Richard Nicoll and Antipodium showing on Sunday 19th at 19.30 and Tuesday 21st at 09.30 respectively. While LFW is in full swing, New Zealand Fashion Week will kick off in Auckland (September 21-25). Frockwriter will be attending for the second time as the guest of the organisers. Click here for the NZFW schedule, which includes Zambesi, Nom*D, Karen Walker, Trelise Cooper and World, with New York’s Nicole Miller this year’s international ringin. What’s Miller doing downunder?

Showing 30 looks including, she promises, some new styles, as part of an Asia Pacific business reccie. Miller is apparently a mate of New York designer Richie Rich who, she says, gave rave reviews of his time in Auckland last year with Pamela Anderson. The Anderson hilarity will be a tough act to match, but we’ll keep you posted.

The event is going big on bloggers.

San Diego-based Rumi Neely will be there for the second year in a row, joined this year by London-based Spaniard Gala Gonzales and Toronto-based Kiwi expat Casie Stewart.

Bloggers are of course now very visible at international fashion shows – except for perhaps this week’s Marc Jacobs show, which sat teen blogging sensation Tavi Gevinson in the third row (with some other female bloggers, we hear, so peed off with their less-than-frow placements at other shows, they were planning to skip them).

But it’s worth remembering that New Zealand Fashion Week welcomed A Shaded View on Fashion’s Diane Pernet as early as 2005.

Kate Sylvester is not showing this year, which is a shame. But great to see World back on schedule after a year hiatus. 

World’s OTT shows are always a highlight of the event. This one is called Wasted Days, Wasted Nights and will take place at 16.30 on Wednesday 22nd September in the opulent Great Room of the Langham Hotel.

World gave frockwriter a sneak peek, below: a black and white leopard print jacket with voluminous fringing on the cuffs.

Two other hints: '70s glamour queens Bianca Jagger and Marie Helvin.

all photos: supplied exclusively to frockwriter by world

First look: The Style Tyrant snaps Ashley McConnell for Orri Henrisson Spring/Summer 2010/2011

We've had the first Australian fashion blogger make it onto the cover of a fashion magazine (Lady Melbourne on Peppermint). Now, if frockwriter is not mistaken, comes the first Australian fashion blogger tapped to photograph an ad campaign. Joining the ranks of American Scott Schuman, aka The Sartorialist, who has shot for Burberry and Australia's own SABA and Canada's Tommy Ton (Lane Crawford) is Sydney fashion blogger, photographer and fashion publicist Matt Jordan, aka Imelda: The Despotic Queen of Shoes and The Style Tyrant, who has just snapped the first campaign for Sydney menswear brand Orri Henrisson. Here is a preview. Jordan met Orri Henrisson designer Henry Ng while shooting him for The Style Tyrant, Jordan's year-old mens street style blog. The model is Ashley McConnell, bass player for Queensland pop outfit Operator Please (Perez Hilton's "favourite rocking teens"), styling is by James Dykes and graphics are courtesy new Sydney graphic design shop Lekkur Studio. Very cool little campaign. McConnell is no stranger to the camera. Repped by Chadwicks, his modelling debut was the Autumn/Winter 2009 campaign for Minty Meets Munt (one of Jordan's clients). FYI McConnell's hair isn't lilac, it's platinum blond - that's just the graphic overlay effect.

all images: matt jordan for orri henrisson, supplied exclusively to frockwriter by orre henrisson

The bloggers of RAFW Part 4: Imelda's Matt Jordan

And finally, a quick chat with Matt Jordan, who blogs about shoes in character as Imelda Marcos on Imelda: The Despotic Queen of Shoes - recently adding a new mens street-style blog called The Style Tyrant. Would have loved to have done more blogger ivs at last week's RAFW, but in between coverage of the jam-packed schedule, there was only so much time. Hope to do more.

The bloggers of RAFW Part 3: Sassi Sam's Sam Winter

The third interview in frockwriter's bloggers of RAFW series: a chat with Sassi Sam’s Sam Winter. Sydney-based Winter established her Sassi Sam e-commerce site five years ago - and the Sassi Sam blog 18 months ago.

The bloggers of RAFW Part 2: An Australian Wintour's Megan Aney

As part of frockwriter's bloggers of RAFW series, here is a short interview with Gold Coast-based Megan Aney, from An Australian Wintour.

The bloggers of RAFW Part 1: Aych blog's Hannah McArdle

For those who followed my RAFW coverage on Twitter, this particular video will be a repeat: a quick chat with Auckland’s Hannah McArdle of Aych Blog. It was part of a short series of blogger interviews I shot at last week's event. Given that it only went on frockwriter’s Posterous feed (where it has nevertheless been viewed over 650 times), I wanted to blog the bloggers of RAFW series in order here, so voilà.

ABC Art Nation's story on Sonny Vandevelde

On the eve of RAFW, frockwriter mentioned that the ABC's hot new Art Nation show would be dedicating its entire May 2 edition to fashion. After sending the embed code for the fashion bloggers story, the producers kindly shot through deets for the standalone story on photographer Sonny Vandevelde that was also featured. It was shot during the L'Oréal Melbourne Fashion Festival in March, when Sonny had a solo exhibition of his backstage work at Mars Gallery. Great to see his editorial work also given some due attention.

ABC Art Nation's story on fashion bloggers

Here is the ABC Art Nation story on fashion bloggers that I mentioned was due to air on Sunday evening, for anyone who missed it. The entire half hour show was in fact dedicated to fashion, which was great to see on Australian television - for once. Will bring you the other stories as quickly as the ABC can get those embed codes over. There was a great standalone profile on our buddy Sonny Vandevelde. And not before time.

ABC Art Nation tracks fashion bloggers

Well we did say RAFW is shaping up as a blogocalypse. And look, frockwriter actually means that in the nicest possible way. A mere whisper at the 2006 event, bloggers are really coming into their own this year. According to The Sydney Morning Herald's Georgina Robinson, whose story about fashion bloggers was splashed on page one of smh.com.au on Thursday, IMG had (as of Wednesday) officially accredited 20 bloggers this year. Robinson later revealed on Twitter that the company had knocked back another 30. In the interim, a number of those knocked back have had their accreditations rushed through. On the eve of RAFW, ABC's Art Nation joins the score of mainstream outlets to track the rise of fashion blogging as part of today's fashion-focussed show. I was honoured to be included, alongside Lady Melbourne and Fashion Hayley (with Sonny Vandevelde featured in either this or a separate story. Sonny was filmed during his recent LMFF exhibition).

The program airs at 5.30pm on ABC1 today and it will be repeated at 7pm on ABC2. Hopefully it will also go online.

In the interim, here is the teaser video from the ABC Art Nation site.

Just to further clarify the accreditation issue for bloggers, some appear to have erroneously believed an accreditation was the only entry point to the event.

Incorrect.

An accreditation, while handy, is only a guarantee into the main venue, the trade show, the media centre and the daily group shows that are organised by IMG. The guest lists of all solo collection shows are strictly at the discretion of the designers. Which is exactly how it works overseas. Earlier this week one Sydney publicist mentioned that 50percent of her guest list/s are non delegates.

Publicists appear to be thawing to the idea of bloggers. Which is great news. Because at the end of the day, they must surely realise that although the number of Australian newspapers, magazines and tv outlets covering RAFW has remained fairly static over the years, the number of independent online media outlets has grown exponentially. This coverage is new, additional exposure for all concerned.

Just a few of the great blogs that will be front and centre covering include, once again, Sonnyphotos (your go-to for the best backstage photography), also Imelda (the shoe expert - with an acerbic general fashion eye), Cultures In Between (an achingly cool indie perspective), the upwardly-mobile Sassisam, New Zealand's Aych and Isaaclikes and Sassybella.

There are many, many more, including etailer blogs (such as The Grand Social). I am flat out today and I am so sorry I don't have time to compile an exhaustive list, but please sing out in the comments so people know where to find you.

Best of luck to everyone with their coverage for the coming week.

I will do a post later today to clarify how frockwriter's multi-platform coverage will work this year. I am hoping this will make it easier to follow. Guys, I cannot do everything on Blogger. It's as simple as that.

In the interim, I have also included a Twitter widget to the RHS set to anyone referencing RAFW. If you are not familiar with Twitter, just click on the links highlighted in blue for more info about those people.