Meet Australia's next top male model Jordan Coulter - and his ass

mert & marcus/dsquared2 via fashion gone rogue

Jordan Coulter is Australia’s latest male modelling star. And here he is in all his glory modelling in the new Fall/Winter 2010/2011 ad campaign for Canadian fashion brand Dsquared2. His on-camera colleagues are Thomas Hoefnagels, Tyler Kenyon, Chanel Iman, Alla Kostromicheva and Iris Strubegger. All over 20. Scouted at the age of 14 by Gold Coast-based Kirk Blake, Coulter has been modelling for the past year. He turns 18 in December and is still at school. No, the photo is not full frontal and there is nothing sexually explicit about the pose. Nor is there is any suggestion whatsoever that anything untoward happened on the shoot. Nevertheless, it's a pervy shot and Coulter is a 17 year-old minor, who can’t vote or legally drink alcohol in either Australia or the US, and who is below the age of sexual consent in California, where the shoot took place.

The images are currently appearing in the pages of fashion magazines across the world and on numerous websites.

Coulter’s other gigs reportedly include Just Jeans, American Eagle, a Calvin Klein lookbook and the Dolce e Gabbana anniversary book (presumably to be unveiled at their show today, which celebrates 20 years of Dolce e Gabbana menswear).

In April, when Coulter was “rushed” to LA for the Dsquared2 shoot, Blake told The Gold Coast Bulletin:

“Mert and Marcus [photographers Mert Alas and Marcus Piggot], are pretty much the Gods of this industry so pretty much as soon as this campaign comes out, he will be known around the world or people will want to know who he is..... We now have to be very careful which jobs he will take, as his value becomes even greater with this new campaign under his belt.''

Frockwriter did make some effort to seek comment from both Kirk Blake and Scene Models.

Scene washed its hands of the matter in an email stating that it only manages Coulter's work in Australia and had nothing to do with the international booking. Blake declined to comment.

Model industry sources tell frockwriter that permission would have been sought from Coulter’s agent and, most likely, also his parents, to photograph him naked and that in fact he would have been paid a premium for doing so.

“It could be his big break” said one industry source.

“We just wouldn’t take the risk” said another; “if he’s that good, why not wait until he turned 18?”




mert & marcus/dsquared via fashion gone rogue

There are many reasons why fashion companies might want to exercise due diligence when it comes to photographing underage models.

In 2008, after questions were asked about a wet swimsuit image of then 13 year old Polish model Monika Jagaciak, IMG Fashion Asia Pacific banned under-16 models from Rosemount Australian Fashion Week. Ironically of course, Jagaciak is repped by IMG Models outside of Poland. Presumably, noone at IMG had a problem with her posing for that shot – or other provocative images while she was still under 16.

Also in 2008, following claims the company had published sexualized images of children in its marketing material, Australian department store David Jones went to the draconian length of banning all under-18 models from even its runway shows - and they don't include nudity.

Insisting on an 18+ workforce won't however guarantee immunity from scandal.

Yesterday, the David Jones board distanced itself from its own former ceo Mark McInnes, after one sexual advance too many prompted legal action from a 25 year-old David Jones employee and McInnes resigned in disgrace.

In March, several models over the age of 18 came forward to call out photographer Terry Richardson for inappropriate behaviour. Will Richardson perhaps one day find himself the target of a class action lawsuit?

What of male models?

In March 2003, Abercrombie & Fitch art director Sam Shahid was found guilty of sexual harassment and ordered to pay US$70,000 to 23 year-old former Abercrombie & Fitch employee Mladen Djankovich. Djankovich accused Shahid of touching him inappropriately and withholding advancement opportunities after he protested.

In December that year, Abercrombie & Fitch made the decision to discontinue its controversial quarterly publication, whose intensely homoerotic imagery – engineered by Shahid and photographed by Bruce Weber – had attracted considerable criticism. At the time one former model told WWD that Weber and Shahid sacked models who weren’t willing to pose nude and that Shahid was constantly pressuring models to “act sexier” on the set.

Just to clarify, to frockwriter's knowledge, none of the allegations revolve around anyone connected to the recent Dsquared2 shoot on which Jordan Coulter worked, but it's worth noting that there are plenty of new rumours flying about alleged sexual activity on fashion shoots involving male models.

In communications sighted by frockwriter, these include claims that young men have been pressured to masturbate themselves in front of parties present on photographic shoots, in order to get themselves 'in the mood' for jobs.

There has also been reference to something colloquially referred to as a "rape shed”, to which male models are said to have been lured.

At least one male model is said to have been emotionally disturbed by similar events.

Meanwhile, overnight came the sad news of yet another model death.

Top French male model Tom Nicon fell to his death from his Milanese apartment building, on the eve of the mens Spring/Summer 2010 show season, which starts today.

There are as yet no other details. Given the score of model deaths over the past two years - including multiple suicides – speculation has inevitably focussed on suicide.

Who knows what may have been troubling Nicon. One thing is for sure, however, the pressures in the modelling industry have never been greater.

All those involved in the supply line would be well advised to take stock of the situation. As noted by models.com’s Wayne Sterling last November, “We're dealing with human beings here, not inanimate mannequins”.

Or pieces of meat.

Tallulah Morton crams White Sands, Harpers Bazaar and Escada into her art school holidays

russh magazine via tfs


Did we say Tallulah Morton had nixed modelling for art? Yes we did. That didn’t stop her from walking 12 shows at Rosemount Australian Fashion Week last month. And today, comes word from Sasha Strebe that White Sands designer Leah Madden has been photographing a mystery "supermodel" who looks very much like Morton on the Gold Coast. Frockwriter checked with Morton’s mother agency Scene Models, which confirmed that she has indeed booked an ad campaign with the Gold Coast-based swimwear label - its first ever, according to Scene - although that's just a lookbook being photographed today. The main campaign won't be shot for another month, reports Scene. In the interim, Morton won’t be twiddling her thumbs. Next week she will shoot the second of two new Harpers Bazaar Australia editorials, this one on Lord Howe Island. Morton will virtually step off that plane and board another on the 27th bound for Munich, where she has been booked to walk in an Escada runway show. She may also do Berlin Fashion Week, which runs July 7-10. Morton is currently on holidays from TAFE and while in Germany, also plans do an internship with a yet-to-be-named Berlin artist.

Samantha Harris leads a new antipodian runway pack for Fall

samantha harris/antipodium

So the Fall/Winter 1011 shows are days from kicking off in New York. And the guessing game begins: which models will make their marks on the new season's runways? In terms of Australian talent, what a contrast to the lineup in just twelve months. Here is the tally of FW0910 shows walked by Australian models from March last year. At least two major names have been scratched from the lineup. Starting with Myf Shepherd, who is taking the year off to pursue fulltime studies at Sydney's College of Fine Arts - who walked more shows than any other Australian model this time last year. Ditto Tallulah Morton, who is studying Fine Arts.


Although Abbey Lee Kershaw bowed out of the last Fall shows due to an injury, she will, frockwriter predicts, continue her fashion ascendancy. She is now ranked world number 10 by models.com - surging past Catherine McNeil (now #14) to become Australia's biggest new modelling success story.

There is potentially some very exciting news surrounding one brand new Australian face, which this blog doesn't want to jinx by blabbing about just yet.

Meanwhile, the first indigenous Australian model is about to hit the international circuit: Samantha Harris. Harris arrived yesterday in London - skipping the New York shows, to ease her into things. Pending how London goes, Chic/Next may then send her to Milan and Paris. Harris features in an only girl editorial in Vogue Australia this month. And here she is also, above, in the new SS10 (Australian FW10) 'Ab Fab' campaign for Australian fashion brand Antipodium, which collaborated with several indigenous artists for the collection. And Harris will not be the only new Australian face at the shows.

New York will be another Chic-ette's first major league fashion week: Charlotte Lohmann. We have mentioned Lohmann several times before at Australian and New Zealand events. Here she is backstage at Trelise Cooper at Auckland's ANZFW in September:



Chadwicks' supremely androgynous Andre Pejic (below), meanwhile, is heading to London, yes for the womens' shows. Frockwriter predicts he may well wind up wearing some of that womenswear on the runway. After all, Antipodium opened its RAFW show in Sydney in May last year with Pejic. Pending the availability of both Pejic and Harris, one might assume we could see both at Antipodium's FW1011 presentation at LFW on Friday 19th February (presentation only).


RUSSH

Scene Models may have lost Tallulah Morton for the time being, but their new star appears to be Amelia Brown (below). The 17 year-old Perth-ite has been modelling for one year and her work to date includes RAFW shows and a January editorial in the local Grazia. Two days ago the latter Simon Lekias shoot wound up on models.com, which was in fact Brown's second models.com outing in seven months. Signed with Storm in London and Ford in New York, Scene director Vikki Graham reports that there is already quite some interest in Brown in New York. Now we now that "hold" does by no means equate to confirmed, but for what it's worth, Brown's New York Fashion Week holds thus far include Marc Jacobs, Marc by Marc Jacobs, Hervé Leger, Adam Lippes, Zac Posen, Isaac Mizrahi and Richard Chai.


grazia via models.com

Priscillas has three new faces heading to the shows, who are already generating buzz. No, Tahnee Atkinson is not one of them.

Lauren Brown recently featured on Models.com's The Ones To Watch. Topless.


luren brown/T02W

Cat Edwards (formerly with Chic) has an upcoming editorial in i-D with no less than Terry Richardson, which possibly guarantees that she was also topless.


cat edwards/ryanelitemodel2


And Julia Nobis was just nominated by influential New York casting director Michelle Lee on the LOVE magazine blog as a face to watch for the season - the second time in a month that Nobis featured on the LOVE blog. Here's what LOVE said about her on January 13:

"You saw her here first. Wait and see"

julia nobis/LOVE

Heading back to the shows with Kershaw are other seasoned international catwalkers such as Skye Stracke, Christina Carey, Georgie Wass and Emma Ishta.

Arguably the biggest mystery of New York Fashion Week is just where is Rachel Rutt?

After a stellar RAFW in Sydney last May and a great first New York season - and even comments about her "buzz" factor by models.com director Wayne Sterling in a New York interview recently done with Today Tonight - not only does Rutt not have a New York showcard this season, as spotted by TFS, she's not even listed on the Next Models website. Looking into it.

UPDATE: According to Chic Management Rutt is still "100%" with Next New York, but does not have a US visa, which is why she is not doing the shows. She is listed in the New Faces division of Next's London site and will be doing London Fashion Week.

One notable Chic-ette omission from the above post is Miranda Kerr who will, say frockwriter's sources, be heading at the very least to Paris, where she is already booked for a second run on Balenciaga's runway, on March 3. The same sources suggest Kerr may also make an appearance in Milan.

Myf and Tallulah nix fashion for art

Myf Shepherd has been booking some fantastic work of late - an edgy new editorial for Numéro (below) and this February cover for Dazed + Confused Japan, above (adjacent to Tallulah Morton's cover of French magazine Velvet). But frockwriter can reveal that, as she indeed hinted she may do back in September, Shepherd is taking a definite break from the modelling business. Although she may do some direct bookings, we will not be seeing her on any runways this year according to her mother agency Chic Management, while Shepherd remains Australia-based to focus on tertiary studies. University? Ah, no yes. Apparently there aren't enough drama queens in the fashion business for Shepherd, who is planning to study set design, as in theatre set design, at a yet-to-be-disclosed institution [UPDATE: Shepherd reports she will be doing a Bachelor of Design at Sydney's College of Fine Arts).


numéro via the fashion spot

Chic director Kathy Ward told frockwriter:

"She wants to take time out, she wants to have some time back in Australia. A lot of girls take time out. Some might start later, some might start earlier and then take a break. I don't think it's unusual. I think it's great for her".

As chronicled by this blog, it's been a rollercoaster ride for Shepherd since she hit the catwalk running at Rosemount Australian Fashion Week in May 2008. After famously being snubbed by the producers of Australia's Next Top Model, she went on to walk for the world's biggest fashion brands at the Resort 2009 and Spring/Summer 2009 seasons several months later.

After the Spring/Summer 2009 haute couture shows, she then clocked up another 62 shows in the Fall/Winter 0910 season, more than any other Australian model. Her advertising work has included Gucci, Sonia Rykiel, Levi's and DKNY Jeans, with several covers, including Vogue Australia. Here is her CV from models.com. It's not bad for a year and a half's work.

But Shepherd did not have a great Spring/Summer 2010 season, surprising many by walking in just a handful of shows at New York Fashion Week last September.

According to Kathy Ward, Shepherd will be returning to modelling in early 2011.

And she's not the only Australian model to be taking some time out.

Tallulah Morton's Australian agent Vikki Graham recently told The Sunday Telegraph's Ros Reines that Morton is taking a break to pursue Fine Arts studies.

According to frockwriter's sources however, Morton has been bandying about the term "quit".

First emerging at Australian Fashion Week in May 2005 at the age of just 13, Morton had a confident debut at New York Fashion Week in September the following year. She was however unable to gain any immediate international momentum, due, it seems, largely to the stringent child work regulations in France (the latter certainly appeared to prevent even rising Polish star Monika Jagaciak from working in Paris until her 16th birthday on January 15th this year).

Morton reemerged at the Paris shows at the age of 16 in March 2008, with a strong debut season, subsequently becoming a favourite of Jean Paul Gaultier and Hermès. Here is her MDC CV.

For the past 18 months however, Morton's off-field antics - as catalogued by Mark 'The Cobrasnake' Hunter - have overshadowed her professional work.

Yes this news will be disappointing to fans of both models. Modelling is, however, a high pressure industry - particularly at the elite level. And at the end of the day, there's more to life than work. Particularly when you've punched more time clocks than your average teenager.

Perhaps if Daul Kim had taken a break from the business, she might still be with us.

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”.