Andrej Pejic: Shooting Jean Paul Gaultier's Spring/Summer 2011 campaign with Karolina Kurkova, rattling rednecks from Sydney to Serbia

karolina kurkova's facebook

Overnight Czech supermodel Karolina Kurkova published a shot of herself and a Jean Paul Gaultier Spring/Summer 2011 campaign co-star on Facebook and the cat is out of the bag and all over the net. Australia’s Andrej Pejic is also in the campaign. That’s the second big international SS11 campaign booked by Pejic to which frockwriter referred in our post on Tuesday. It is unclear at this stage if the JPG campaign features any other models beyond Kurkova and Pejic. But both do look to be wearing similar pleated trench coats – which were prominently featured in Gaultier’s SS11 womenswear show in Paris in October. The garment does not, however, appear anywhere in Gaultier’s mens SS11 collection, which was shown in Paris in June and which, as you may recall, Pejic in fact walked. What conclusion can we draw from this? That, unless Kurkova posted a staged teaser shot, Pejic may well be modelling womenswear in this campaign. Stop the press. 

Since he first popped up on the international fashion radar at the Paris mens' shows in June, much ink - not to mention photoshoot styling - has been dedicated to Pejic's distinctive androgynous look.

In Jan Breen Burns' recent story in The Age, 'Beautiful Boys', Matthew Anderson at Chadwick, Pejic's mother agency, suggested that the agency's new star could be at the vanguard of a whole new "femiman" trend.
 

On Wednesday, News Limited’s newspapers went ballistic on the Pejic story. The same story ran in multiple interstate editions – and even as the main shot on the front page of News Limited's online news portal news.com.au, together the headline, “Hang on - Dude looks like a lady.... Melbourne teenager is the most beautiful boy in the world”.
 

The story prompted almost 100 comments, largely hostile towards Pejic – describing him as "flat out just too weird”, “ridiculous and laughable”, “hideous”, “disgusting” and “queer”. That's what was actually published. You can only imagine what wasn't cleared.
 

A very similar reaction, in other words, to that prompted by a recent Serbian television story on Pejic, after a Serbian news crew followed Pejic around his grandmother’s rural village over the northern hemisphere summer and the reporter canvassed opinion from some of the village locals.

The News Limited backlash prompted quite some buzz on Twitter and at least two blog posts which lamented Australia’s intolerance towards anyone who is “different”– and discussed the reemergence of androgyny in fashion.

Pejic, meanwhile, is laughing all the way to the bank. 

mert + marcus for vogue paris via TFS

Frockwriter previously noted how unusual Pejic's career trajectory has been for an emerging Australian model: since June he has shot editorials for three international editions of Vogue, including two of the most prestigious fashion titles in the world (Vogue Paris and Vogue Italia). 

Also out-of-the-ordinary: the fact that he keeps getting buddied up with the world’s most high-profile female models.
 

Kurkova is one of the biggest names in the modelling business. 

Ranked by Forbes in 2008 as the sixth highest model earning model, earning an estimated US$5million in the preceding 12 months, she slipped off Forbes’ more recent lists after her contract with Victoria’s Secret expired. Kurkova was back in the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show this year, nevertheless, and she continues to be one of modelling’s biggest earners. Hence her models.com rankings in the “Money Girls” (#7) and “Top Sexiest Models” (#19) lists. 

In the September issue of Vogue Paris, Pejic was photographed alongside 14 year-old Daphne Groeneveld (also Malgosia Bela and Lea T). Groeneveld, who currently features on the magazine's December cover, was one of the biggest new modelling names to emerge in 2010. 

vogue italia/z fashion blog via TFS

In the November issue of Vogue Italia, Pejic was cast by high profile photographer Steven Meisel to appear alongside models.com’s world number two Freja Beha Erichsen, together with Iselin Steiro and Iris Strubegger (equal #9). 

In Pejic's mystery second SS11 ad campaign - for an equally big brand whose name we can't yet reveal - he was shot alongside lookalike Latvian supermodel Ginta Lapina, yet another of the industry’s hottest new faces, who has advertising campaigns for Yves Saint Laurent and Miu Miu under her belt.

LMFF, Refinery 29 downunder and Sonny Vandevelde comes of Age

It's a busy week next week. On Sunday frockwriter will be down in Melbourne for the opening of the L'Oreal Melbourne Fashion Festival. On Wednesday 17th, we will have the honour of moderating the Sydney presentation by Refinery 29 co-founders, the New York-based Philippe Von Borries and Piera Gelardi. Staged at the Museum of Sydney and organised by Melbourne digital outfit Portable, it’s one of three Australian talks the duo will deliver over the next seven days, providing an insight into what went into building one of the web’s hottest indie fashion sites. Tonight they will be in Brisbane and on the 18th, Melbourne. Then on Friday 19th frockwriter will be back down in Melbourne, where we will also have the honour of opening the first Australian exhibition of our buddy, Belgralian backstage snapper Sonny Vandevelde at Mars Gallery.

The exhibition's soft opening is this Saturday and it runs until March 28th, so check it out if you are in town.

Now a regular contributor to the online entity of The New York Times' fashion magazine T (among many other publications), just last week Sonny was thrilled to find several of his shots being used on the site's homepage to flag its Fall/Winter 2010/2011 coverage.

Sonny already knows he is the focus of an upcoming feature in the Melbourne broadsheet The Age, penned by fashion editor Jan Breen Burns - which will in fact be the first mainstream Australian media profile of his work.

What he doesn’t yet know is that he is in fact tomorrw's cover story of the paper's A2 arts supplement. Above is a sneak peek at the A2 cover which features one of his shots. Buy the paper to read how this Sydney surfie became one of the best backstage photographers in the world. We'll update with a link once the story goes online (and voilà).