Dempsey Stewart and Ella Verberne charm the pants off Kate Sylvester

Frockwriter shot backstage and front-of-house at Kate Sylvester’s Spring/Summer 2010/2011 show at Rosemount Australian Fashion Week. And now here is a preview of the new SS1011 campaign for her curiously titled “This Charming Man” collection, which is rocking Viviens face Dempsey Stewart (right, above) and Ella Verberne from New Zealand's Clyne Models and includes this fetching little caramel leather microshorts, bustier and bomber combo of which Lady GaGa would no doubt wholly approve. Stewart might be Australian, but she has been romantically linked to a Kiwi – model (and brother of Zippora) Jasper Seven. Verberne, meanwhile, was recently the subject of a profile on models.com, apparently just two days after arriving on Clyne’s website. Verberne joins other recent antipodian MDC inductees Andrej Pejic and Codie Young.

Which only goes to show that when it comes to modelling, even if you hail from the lands downunder, the industry’s gossip grapevine has its ears attuned globally.

Helping that radar of course is the site's New Faces editor, Rosie Daly, who happens to be Australian. Daly is the founder and editor of emerging talent website The Ones 2 Watch, which was acquired by MDC in 2008.

Styled and photographed by Karen Inderbitzen-Waller, Kate Sylvester's SS1011 campaign will bow on the 28th July.

Sylvester is due to show her Autumn/Winter 2011 collection at New Zealand Fashion Week at 6pm on Friday 24th September and is promising a show "unlike anything else seen at a fashion week". According to the NZFW HQ, however, it won't be the week's closing show, with at least one other show scheduled to run later that night.

 

all images: supplied exclusively to frockwriter by kate sylvester

Another empowering image courtesy of the fashion industry

 dario salamone/the ones 2 watch

  

This one is by photographer Dario Salamone, from an editorial story published in The Ones To Watch. That's the emerging talent website operated by models.com, but which was founded and continues to be edited by Australian Rosie Daly (MDC's New Faces editor). The model is Russian Alonya Zubakina and according to the accompanying notes, the shoot – titled “Unholy Wood” - is “A story shot on film about the darkness of the sacred and the sublime of nature, inspired by the power of natural light, relics, votives and Alena’s [sic] beauty". Coincidentally, its publication comes at a time when the practice of stoning women once again finds itself under the western spotlight. 

The image is also somewhat reminiscent of the 1969 'Table' sculpture by British pop artist Allen Jones (below), which depicts a lingerie-clad woman kneeling on all fours, with a sheet of glass on her back. 

The sculpture and others in the same series went down well with feminists at the time. Not to mention Stanley Kubrick, who ripped it off for one scene of his 1971 film A Clockwork Orange, after Jones declined to provide his artworks for nix. 

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toni/wikimedia

Cassi van den Dungen - two steps closer to her model dream

camerons via TO2W


OK so where were we on the Tahnee Atkinson/Cassi van den Dungen/Australia's Next Top Model roundabout? Atkinson has just shot the Curvy jeans campaign for Bettina Liano. After losing the Cycle 5 ANTM crown to Atkinson and flipping the bird to the show by turning down contracts with Priscillas and Elite New York, van den Dungen, meanwhile, signed with her childhood modelling agency, Tanya Powell, in Melbourne, then also with Work Agency in Sydney, before shooting lookbooks for Portmans and getting bullied by ANTM’s Charlotte Dawson and Alex Perry. Coupla interesting updates. Apart from currently being plastered all over Portmans front windows, van den Dungen has finally ditched Tanya Powell for Camerons, a boutique - but nevertheless far more serious-looking - Melbourne agency. Most interesting of all: she has just been featured on The Ones To Watch, models.com’s emerging talent satellite site.

In a profile on December 1, TO2W noted:

“Cassi is sensational – her features, her height and her personality all combine to make one super model who is creating interest all over the world. With building a strong book her priority right now, expect to see Cassi on the global fashion scene by mid-2010”.

Fascinating contrast to the prediction by ANTM model mentor Charlotte Dawson, who told her Facebook friends back in July:

“I think Cassi's only going to end up being the poster girl for Sunbury Centrelink”.

Meanwhile, although Tahnee Atkinson reports that she was recently told in New York that she would need to lose weight in order to work in that market (with Atkinson telling Today Tonight last week, "But I'm prepared to do that to go to New York"), van den Dungen told News Ltd that one of the reasons she rejected the Priscillas/Elite contracts was out of concern that she would need to lose weight to work internationally. Which NL duly whipped up into the headline:

"Australia's Next Top Model's Cassi van den Dungen rejected New York deal over weight issues"


Without having set foot beyond Sydney however, she is looking rather thin in this new set of test shots.