Prue Lewington: style editor, photographer, exhibitionist

We’ve read a lot about self-taught blogger photographers. A good eye and an even better camera can work wonders for anyone seeking to fill their online publishing ventures with original photographic material. Scott ‘The Sartorialist’ Schuman, Tommy ‘Jak & Jil’ Ton and Todd ‘The Selby’ Selby three great cases in point. But multitasking mainstream fashion editors or journalists? Not quite so common (and as frockwriter can attest, we’re not that welcome in the blogosphere. Something to do with the sentiment that we’ve somehow cheated our way to a profile that the ‘grassroots’ blogging crew have had to build from scratch). Sydneysiders would know the name Prue Lewington from her weekend fashion musings in The Sunday Telegraph. But who knew that she could also take a decent photo? Also self-taught, Lewington has been shooting in her spare time for the past three years and her work has been published in The Sunday Telegraph and elle.com. Tonight her first exhibition opens at the Kit & Kaboodle Stairwell Gallery in Sydney's Kings Cross. 

To be fair to Lewington, she brings more international chops to the Australian fashion reporting table than most - including journalists and bloggers.

She interned in the fashion department at US Harpers Bazaar before moving on to assist New York superstylist Patricia Field on Sex And The City. She then worked as an editorial manager at Nylon magazine, a Sunday stylist at The New York Post and finally, as the style editor of The New York Daily News. 

Here is a selection of images from Lewington’s website, taken in Sydney, New York and Argentina, some of which will be offered for sale tonight at the Stairwell Gallery. In addition to two of her hitherto unseen portraits: British model Jacquetta Wheeler (above) and a rather forlorn-looking Elle Halliwell (second from the bottom).  

Snapped in an abandoned café, flanked by a solitary, empty bottle of vino, Lewington's Sunday Telegraph fashion colleague stares off into the distance – perhaps contemplating the uncertain future of print.  

all images: prue lewington

Sunday rose: Abbey Lee Kershaw covers Sunday Magazine's fashion issue

Can't get enough of Australian supermod Abbey Lee Kershaw? Then you'll be pleased to know she is the cover story of tomorrow's Sunday Magazine inside Sydney's Sunday Telegraph and Melbourne's Herald Sun newspapers. Here is an exclusive preview of the cover, part of an editorial spread that was recently photographed by the mag in Sydney while Kershaw was shooting the Portmans campaign. This issue is a fashion special, timed to coincide with next week's L'Oréal Melbourne Fashion Festival. Frockwriter didn't do the Kershaw profile, but we did write the 'style dynasties' story: a profile of three Australian families which have passed the fashion torch down the line to subsequent generations.  

In the four-page story on Kershaw, penned by Melissa Field, the world number five makes a few revelations: 

- As a child, she used to pretend she was a mermaid in the bath and lock the door so noone could see her tail. "I think that's why I'm so good at what I do - I find it very easy to pretend to be part of a world I'm not actually in". 

- She loves to be barefoot and "hardly ever" wears shoes when in Australia. 

- She shares a Brooklyn apartment with her bf, Our Mountain frontman Matthew Hutchinson, and would like to further pursue music, in addition to art and dance.

- On the pain of piercing: 

"It's like wasabi. I love it because it's hot and intense, then it goes away, which is similar to getting a tattoo. Anyone who says it doesn't hurt is lying - it canes, but then it goes away. I find that fascinating".

"I think most people would be surprised by my dark nature and the fact that I have quite an addictive personality. When I started getting tattoos, I couldn't stop. I also have piercings all over...... One day, I'll have a lot more tattoos and probably some odd hair colours, too".

image: supplied to frockwriter by sunday magazine

Nicole Trunfio to officially replace Miranda Kerr as the face of David Jones' winter 2011 launch

vogue italia

In July, following the news that Miranda Kerr would be skipping David Jones’ Spring/Summer 2010/2011 runway showcase to enjoy her honeymoon with Orlando Bloom – amidst a deafening chorus of speculation she was three months pregnant – frockwriter predicted that Nicole Trunfio would replace Kerr as the face of the department store’s upcoming Autumn/Winter 2011 runway showcase and that Kerr would resume her official duties for the Spring/Summer launch in July 2011. So it’s official. Today’s Sunday Telegraph reports that Trunfio will “replace [Kerr] as the star of the David Jones Winter 2011 season”. Trunfio, who is also currently profiled in a video interview on the website of Vogue Italia, was flown by DJs to Sydney this week to shoot the winter catalogue. 

vogue italia

Kerr will still have a minor role to play. 

Fairfax's rival Sunday newspaper, The Sun Herald, today published an image of Kerr from David Jones' upcoming Autumn/Winter catalogue. The shot was recently taken in LA – with a 60 Minutes crew in tow, as anyone who saw that recent interview with Kerr would recall. 

vogue australia via the sun herald

The Sun Herald also scored an interview with Kerr, who told the paper that she will feature in several images in the Autumn/Winter catalogue, but is “looking forward to coming back to support and work with DJs for the summer season and continuing in my role as fashion ambassador''. 

The Sun Herald speculates that “one or more” of the models who filled in for Kerr in July in Sydney - Trunfio, Abbey Lee Kershaw, Alexandra Agoston and Catherine McNeil – will be gracing the retailer's runway in February.

As we now know, Trunfio will definitely be there. Agoston and McNeil may be two other contenders. We doubt very much, however, that Kershaw would avail herself for this show, given that its timing will coincide with the peak of the northern hemisphere Fall/Winter 2010/2011 runway season, during which Kershaw is always in huge demand.

Evidently, one paper scored the interview with Kerr and the other, the interview with Trunfio. And it looks like The Sunday Telegraph may have felt it got the short end of the stick. 

In what reads as an extraordinarily bitchy comment, the paper notes that Trunfio “is taller, thinner and younger than pregnant Kerr”. 
 
Elsewhere in today's edition, The Sunday Telegraph also reports that yet another nude image of pregnant Kerr will be published in the January 2010 issue of Vogue Australia, whose cover she graces, noting:

“Here's a radical idea, Miranda - how about posing with your kit on for your next shoot?”

Miranda Kerr's "naked fury", Jasper Glavanics' pounds of flesh

miranda kerr, 2002/screen cap jasperglavanics.com

Fascinating insight into the grubby world of celebrity tabloids in Sydney's Sunday Telegraph newspaper tomorrow. The first edition is now on select newsagent shelves and inside the back cover, in The Insiders double page gossip column, is a half page story on Miranda Kerr. No, not a pregnancy update, but a (censored) topless image of an 18 year-old Kerr taken in 2002, together with the headline "Kerr's naked fury". The story goes on to feign outrage and outline how "an old friend" of Kerr's has "taken advantage" of her new-found celebrity to sell what are believed to be the first topless images of Kerr to a British tabloid for a "hefty" fee. The photographer is quoted as saying he previously refrained from selling the shots to a mens magazine because "they were too nice". So a Fleet Street tabloid is a far more tasteful alternative then? But while the photographer has got no problem with flogging eight year old topless images of teenage Kerr, he asked not to be named. Couple of points here.

First up, Kerr was 18 at the time and therefore a consenting adult.

She also reportedly signed a release form for the images in 2005. 

Models do nude work all the time, some more than others. Obviously at 18 Kerr was not the celebrity that she is today and as far as frockwriter is aware, there is nothing embarrassing about the images. But there is of course no shortage of anecdotes involving the release of nude imagery of celebrities, taken years before, at a time when they were perhaps short of money, eager to get a legup in the industry or just simply plain naïve.

Kerr of course has done quite a lot of recent nude work, including appearing topless on the cover of Australian Rolling Stone and in the 2009 Pirelli calendar, shot by Terry Richardson.

In 2007, Kerr's Victoria's Secret contract catapulted her to prominence in the international modelling business. But her relationship with Hollywood actor Orlando Bloom sent her into a totally different celebrity orbit - one that has dominated entertainment coverage in recent months, thanks to their marriage in July and the subsequent announcement of Kerr's pregnancy.

She calls the shots now, controls her image and, moreover, works for fees which would be a hell of a lot more than they were when she was an unknown Australian teenager.

Just like Lara Stone is a far bigger name in 2010 than she was as recently as 2008, when Stone posed for a series of topless images for Greg Lotus, which he sold to French Playboy this year. Stone has now taken legal action against Lotus. Legal sources say that in some jurisdictions, celebrities have publicity rights over their image.

Frockwriter can reveal that the photographer who took the shots of Kerr at 18 is Australian Jasper Glavanics and that the images are part of a portfolio of images of Kerr that Glavanics uses on his website to promote his work (as seen in the above screen cap).

Frockwriter's well-placed sources report that the UK rights to the images were offered to British tabloid News of the World (which, like The Sunday Telegraph, is also published by News Ltd); that Glavanics' anonymity was part of the terms and conditions of any photo sales; and that distributor Tito Media also asked Kerr's camp to match the News of the World's (four figure) British pounds price, to get them off the market. The bullying of  deep-pocketed high-profilers into coughing up so as to disappear potentially embarrassing imagery is a not at all uncommon practice in the celebrity universe.

This evening, Glavanics told frockwriter that the images will not be appearing in News of the World because Kerr had purchased them - a fee that would have been over and above whatever Glavanics/Tito pocketed from The Sunday Telegraph, which discloses that it paid a "nominal fee" for the photographs (with Tito Media's watermark clearly visible on one of two shots published).
  
However Kerr's spokeswoman Carlii Lyon flatly denied Kerr had purchased the images.

So let's wait and see. The images will either be surfacing some time soon - or else Kerr did buy them, but doesn't want to admit it, at risk of encouraging other photographers.

UPDATE 11/10/10: ON ITS BLOG, TITO MEDIA GLOATS THAT THE IMAGES, WHICH ARE APPARENTLY FULL FRONTAL, ARE SOON TO BE PUBLISHED - AFTER LYON "FAILED TO MAKE PAYMENT". 

Added Lyon "It is a quick way to make enemies in the industry and even worse to think it was someone Miranda considered a friend and colleague".

Can't wait for the arrival of Baby Bloom.