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

Cat gets the Tweety Bird

Since The Daily Telegraph published (this) image of Catherine McNeil at the annual Bondi Icebergs New Year's Day party, McNeil's usually supportive fan base has been in overdrive on the haterade. "Bogan" sniped one fan on McNeil's discussion thread on The Fashion Spot web forum. "She just needs to lay off the booze, the salt and sugar for a while is all" noted another. It wasn't the first time McNeil's new short black bob had seen the light of day - frockwriter first mentioned it in October - but together with a new facial piercing and the unflattering angle, shot while McNeil looked to be dancing with Daniella Rech, the photographer wife of expat Sydney show producer Kannon Rajah, it wasn't really the clearest image. Thanks to what is either McNeil's new Twitter feed, or else an elaborate fake using her happy snaps, here are a few other recent shots that demonstrate the new 'do, which has been cut shorter still - two featuring McNeil's great mate, Sydney model Stephanie Carta. 

all images: meowcatmccat

Tom Ford's eyes-only debut womenswear collection is now on YouTube

Well Tom Ford certainly got off to a cracking start in 2011, uploading images of his new eyewear campaign which co-stars Abbey Lee Kershaw. Evidently Ford is another client who didn’t mind Kershaw’s new platinum blonde do – even apparently adding hair extensions. Now (via Homotography) comes a video of that top-secret debut Tom Ford womenswear show which was presented to a tightly-edited throng of just 100 at New York Fashion Week in September, with highly restricted camera access. Ford has spent a lot of time talking down the new digital news domain, telling US Vogue, "I do not understand everyone's need to see everything online the day after the show". Now that it’s crunch time for Ford's collection to hit stores, frockwriter has little doubt he is thrilled that social media is spreading the buzz. 

From Social-Lites to Urbanomics: Eleven "crucial" consumer trends for 2011

vanessa jackman

The just-published list of 11 Crucial Consumer Trends for 2011 by consumer analyst Trendwatching is an interesting read. More than one trend, not surprisingly, was borne of the social media revolution. Of particular note for the fashion business is #4: "Made for China (if not BRIC)". This flags the flurry of Western fashion and luxury brands to launch either limited edition products specifically tailored to, or else completely new brands in, the rapidly-developing BRIC economies (Brazil, Russia India, China). Goldman Sachs, which coined the term in 2001, reports that the BRICs have contributed over a third of world GDP growth over the past decade, growing from one sixth to nearly one quarter of the world economy. By 2050, predicts Goldman Sachs, their combined economies could eclipse those of the current richest countries of the world. This year's bespoke BRIC product includes Levi’s Denizen jeans brand for Asians; a 12-unit collection of Christian Dior Lady Blue Shanghai products, including a phone, that was only released in Shanghai; the new Hermès brand Shang Xia and Chloé's limited edition Marcie handbag, launched exclusively in Shanghai stores this month. Here is Trendwatching's 2011 list, complete with a dizzying array of buzzwords. Get with the program.

1. Random Acts of Kindness (aka RAKs) 
Seen as part of the Generation G (for generosity) megatrend, via which companies are using social media to monitor the temperature of consumer moods and acting on this intel with treats, surprises, pampering etc...
 
2. Urbanomics 
Tapped as "one of the absolute megatrends for the coming decade". Half the world’s population reportedly already lives in urban areas, with 180,000 people moving into cities daily. Research indicates that urban consumers tend to be "more daring, liberal, tolerant, experienced and more prone to trying out new products and services".
 
3. Pricing Pandemonium
From local discounts to flash sales, member sales, group buying, dynamic pricing and GPS-driven deals, pricing in 2011 will never be the same again according to Trendwatching. Fuelled, of course, by always-on connectivity.
 
4. Made for China (if not BRIC) See above.
 
5. Online Status Symbols 
From badges to widgets to Likes to Diggs, any kind of symbol, either virtual or real world, that helps consumers display to peers their online kudos eg connections, popularity. Digi bling in other words.
 
6. Wellthy 
The rise and rise of the wellness movement.
 
7. Social-Lites and Twinsumers 
Consumers have become curators in a new media landscape that is fuelled by word of mouth, recommends and person-to-person dynamics. Twinsumers? Consumers with similar consumer patterns and interests.
 
8. Emerging Generosity
Brands and wealthy individuals from emerging markets will increasingly be expected to give, care and join Generation G - as opposed to simply selling and taking. If they don't, the Transparency Triumph will see to it that they are exposed as douches. 

9. Planned Spontaneity 
Getting together has never been easier. An evolution of Nowism, that is connected to Mass Mingling and which hinges on the exploding mobile trend of geo-tagging.

10. Eco Superior 
Products that aren’t just eco-friendly, but supposedly superior in every way to their less green predecessors. Examples include the Stealth Toilet and the new all-electric, zero emissions Renault DeZir that can reportedly reach 100km/h in five seconds. Just watch out for the Vélibs (see #11).  

11. Owner-less
The rise of organised sharing and rental programs, as opposed to outright ownership. Think clothing exchanges and car- and bicycle-sharing programs, such as the hugely popular Vélib bicycle service in Paris (in the picture, above). As documented in the 2010 book What's Mine In Yours: The Rise of Collaborative Consumption by Rachel Botsman and Roo Rogers.

Head to the Trendwatching website for much greater detail about these and other trends. 

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. 


 

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

Someone call security: How [frockwriter] got blacklisted by Google

Welcome to the blog that you have when you're not having a blog [NB This post was published simultaneously on frockwriter's Posterous, to circumvent security issues]. Just a quick headsup about the security ballsup that has gone down today on the frockwriter main blog. As anyone other than RSS and email subscribers may have noticed, since approximately 1144 AEST today, visitors to the site have been greeted by a great big red alert sign with the noticification: “Reported Attack Page! This web page at frockwriter.blogspot.com has been reported as an attack page and has been blocked based on your security preferences”. Together with a nifty little security guard icon holding a stop sign. Having been Google spoofed in April, I immediately assumed that a one-on-one hack job was not beyond the realm of possibilities. On closer inspection, however, it emerged that the issue was affecting several other Australian sites: Pages Digital and at least three other sites, the city-centric digi hipster guides, Two Thousand, Three Thousand and Five Thousand. What’s the common link? UPDATED: NOW OBVIOUSLY BACK ON THE AIR. SEE EXPLANATION AT THE END OF POST. 


 
PagesDigital is frockwriter’s advertising partner and while there is currently no campaign on frockwriter, PagesDigital created and managed the little flash animation that linked through to our recent New Zealand Fashion Week coverage. It in turn was connected to Pages Digital's OpenX-powered ad server. 

OpenX claims to be the world’s leading independent provider of digital advertising technology, serving 350 billion ads per month across 150,000 websites in 10 countries.

According to Pages Digital, an OpenX security issue has been identified and an update was released today and installed.
Having utilised Google’s Webmasters Diagnostics service, I can report that no malware is currently detected on frockwriter. To be on the absolute safe side, I removed the flash animation.

However the fact of the matter is that none of this is going to assist anyone immediately remove themselves from Google’s blacklist, as the site review request process can, according to Google, take WEEKS.


Obviously RSS and email subscribers won’t know what’s going on because they’re simply accessing a feed. And of course while subscribers are fantastic, they don’t contribute to daily traffic which, in frockwriter’s case, has really tanked today. I have been referred to Australian agency Feel Creative which reportedly set Pages Digital up with OpenX (and possibly the Two Thousand crew as well). So far noone at Feel Creative has felt very communicative and gotten back to me. So will keep you posted.

One of the questions I’d like to ask Feel Creative is: was there a new OpenX security update launched after the one that was released on September 14? Because that appears to be the last time that OpenX in fact issued a security update. Or did someone simply forget to tell the Australian publishers?

Oops. 


UPDATE 2130: Yes indeedy, someone did forget to tell the Australians - and thousands of other publishers that were affected overnight according to Feel Creative's Chris Hang, who just got back to me. Hang reports that only today did Feel Creative head to the OpenX site to track down the security update [OpenX 2.8.7] that was released on September 14. Why didn't Feel Creative have the new security patch prior to today? Hang didn't have an answer for that. But he did say that it would be the last time his company uses OpenX. "This is a dealbreaker" he told me.


In what appears to be a miraculously fast turnaround from Google [and many thanks to the efforts of Feel Creative] at time of writing the security warnings had been removed from both Frockwriter and Pages Digital. They still affect Two Thousand, Three Thousand and Five Thousand [UPDATE 25/10 - the three latter sites are now back on the air as well]. 

photo: cheeseburger.com/BBBella

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.

Inception via Twitter? Black nail polish-wearing ABC anchor dreams of Freddie Mercury duet

As the anchor of ABC’s prestigious late-night current affairs bulletin Lateline and the network’s former Washington and National Security correspondent, Walkley Award-winning Australian journalist and author Leigh Sales has covered some big stories. What’s her dream job? Noted Sales on Twitter this morning, “I had the coolest dream last night that I was playing a grand piano with Freddie Mercury. Real life seems a bit greyer today”. Now it's unclear if Sales has always been a Freddie Mercury fangurl - or just how well she was previously versed in Mercury’s pioneering efforts vis-à-vis the black nail polish beauty trend. Coincidentally, however, on August 23rd, two days after Sales played a key on air role during the ABC’s federal election coverage – wearing black nail polish - we Tweeted the following (tongue in cheek) observation: “top marks BTW go to abc #ausvotes anchor @leighsales for doing more for the visibility of black nail polish than freddie mercury on sat”. We know Sales spotted it, because she immediately replied via Twitter:  

“It was unexpected that I also ended up in a black suit. Didn't mean to look quite so emo”. 

Pushing our luck, we had the temerity to ask which brand? To which Sales responded:

“I don't know actually, whatever the nail place uses”.

Now Frockwriter has lost count of the number of stories broken on this blog, that have wound up in mainstream media outlets. Yesterday, The Australian Financial Review picked up the MJ Bale/P Johnson cartoon ad campaign fracas. And The Daily Telegraph today names Jasper Glavanics as the photographer whose eight year-old nude images of 18 year-old Miranda Kerr have been shopped around to the highest bidder - four days after frockwriter named him, while The Tele's own Sunday edition published two of Glavanics' Kerr images but withheld his name at his request.  


But inception via Twitter is getting a little ridiculous surely?


 
photoshop composite + captions: frockwriter. original abc screen cap: ruby goes/flickr

Louis Vuitton's glitch in the Matrix

There is no spoon, OK? As consolation, in approximately half an hour (ETA 14.30 CEST, 23.30 AEST), the Louis Vuitton Spring/Summer 2011 womenswear show will take place in Paris. Head to Louis Vuitton's Facebook page to watch the live stream and Now Fashion for still photos in (almost) real-time. And as if runway models didn't have enough backstage photographers to contend with the nanosecond they exit the runway, they are due to be assaulted by 52 cameras in-the-round backstage, via which every outfit will be clocked in 360. Check back in back at LV Facebook central at 20.00 CEST (05.00 AEST) to see the fruits of those Matrix-style photo sessions (in the interim, you can practice rotating Jacobs with your cursor via LV's handy little player, above). After this, there is no turning back. You take the blue pill - the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill - you stay in Wonderland and Marc Jacobs shows you how deep the rabbit-hole goes.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Christian Dior's little shop of haute couture

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

Miranda Kerr definitely hooked up with Balenciaga last week - and that's definitely not her Twitter account

The Balenciaga plot thickens. This morning frockwriter mentioned the mystery surrounding a new photo of Miranda Kerr. According to the @MirandaMayKerr Twitter account, it was just taken during a Balenciaga Resort collection shoot. Well Kerr's personal publicist, Carlii Lyon, who just spoke with Kerr in New York, tells frockwriter that the shot was definitely taken during a Balenciaga "event" in New York last week. What was Kerr doing there and why is the makeup she's wearing identical to that seen on Balenciaga's models in these photographs of the collection which were published on Style.com and wwd.com on June 9? Lyon said she was unable to elaborate on the nature of Kerr's involvement with the brand, other than to say she was definitely working with it in some capacity. Nor does Lyon - or indeed Kerr, she claims - know who took the photo. One thing Lyon could confirm was that @MirandaMayKerr is a fake account. Lyon said that she and Kerr are attempting to have it shut down - as they have done with several others. Lyon confirmed that @MirandaKerr is the only bona fide Miranda Kerr Twitter account. Unfortunately, it's not particularly active at the moment. Nor has it been verified with Twitter, which doesn't help. They're working on it, says Lyon.

Miranda's Balenciaga hat trick?

@mirandamkerr

Well that new "cardinal rule for models" (ie do not leak information from jobs on social media) might not apply to Miranda Kerr. In what is either an elaborate fake Twitter account ruse - or the real deal - "@MirandaMKerr" left several Twitter clues from the set of a "Balenciaga Resort" shoot yesterday. "Back from Balenciaga Resort, It was awesome moment. Always fun to work with talented people" they noted, before posting an autoportrait showing an interesting winged pink smokey eye beauty look - identical to that sported by Balenciaga's models in these images of the same collection that were published last week on Style.com. But is this in fact Miranda Kerr? The account has not yet been verified by Twitter and there have been fake Miranda Kerr accounts before. Frockwriter is checking with her agents in Sydney and New York. If it is a ruse, then at least one bona fide supermodel Twitterer has been sucked in by it - fellow Victoria's Secret model Selita Ebanks - whose Twitter account has been verified by Twitter - is following @MirandaMayKerr. See updated post: It's a fake Twitter account, but that's definitely Kerr at Balenciaga last week.

It seems like a lot of trouble and expense to go to for a lookbook. Campaign? If the photos do emerge, then they would represent the third consecutive Balenciaga gig for Kerr, who walked in the French brand's Spring/Summer 2010 and Fall/Winter 2010/2011 runway shows.

It would also be the latest coup in Kerr's quest to refashion herself from a purely "commercial" star of Victoria's Secret lingerie fame, to high fashion ice queen, a trajectory that has also seen her book campaigns for Prada and Jil Sander, walk for Prada and model for edgier publications such as French Numéro and Britain's i-D.

Frockwriter can't help thinking that this is definitely a two-way street, with some of those far less accessible high fashion brands hoping for some commercial ruboff in the prevailing challenging economic climate.

Social (fashion) workers

@mythreads

A quick update on the Myer spring catalogue shoot, which rolled on today in Melbourne. Frockwriter mentioned yesterday that there was some confusion over the social media aspect of the campaign, with representatives of at least one model booked for the campaign, Cassi van den Dungen, surprised at the extent of the coverage. This morning frockwriter received an email from Myer rep Tim Evans, from the DT Digital agency, which is handling the campaign. Evans revealed that this was the first time that Myer had covered a campaign shoot in real time. He also wanted to clear up any “misunderstanding” over yesterday's post and insisted that all permissions were indeed sought from all the agencies – and duly granted. According to the van den Dungen camp, this is "absolutely not" correct. Confusing, it is. Update 11/06/10 @ 1.30pm. Van den Dungen's Melbourne agency, Cameron's, which negotiated the deal, claims that it did know about the social media coverage and did not have a problem with it. Work Agency, van den Dungen's mother agency in Sydney, which manages her career, has a different position.

To clarify one aspect of yesterday’s post, however, there was in fact only one party Tweeting from the set: Melbourne blogger and journalist Kat George, who writes for a variety of publications and websites, including The Vine, which is published by Fairfax Digital.

According to Tim Evans, George was hired to Tweet live from the shoot under Myer's Mythreads Twitter feed.

George also Tweeted from the shoot on her own Twitter feed.

She explains this here, here and here – although it’s not 100percent clear from this information that it’s a paid gig (George also points to several posts on Myer's Mythreads Facebook page, which refer to her "guest blogging" and being "on location" for the Myer catalogue shoot).

Frockwriter spoke to several other agents this afternoon about their approach to the burgeoning social media arena.

Several parties spoke of a new cardinal rule for models: do not post any information or images from jobs on social networking sites.

One agent recounted the story of a model who could not resist sharing her upcoming magazine cover on Facebook. Advanced to the model as a courtesy by the magazine, the cover was however swiftly dumped in favour of another image with a different model, following the indiscretion.

When it comes to commercial clients and the use of images/footage shot on location on jobs, one senior modelling industry figure conceded that social media has opened up a whole new “grey area” for the industry.

“Everyone has a camera on set now” they noted.