In Vogue: Emilia Skuza and Melissa Johannsen

nicole bentley for vogue australia via viviens' facebook

Two under-the-radar models, both repped by the same Adelaide mother agent (Finesse Models), but two separate Sydney agencies (Viviens and Chadwick), wind up shooting a 16-page editorial together in Vogue Australia. What are the odds? Voilà a taste of the “Twin Peaks” story from Vogue’s July edition, out tomorrow. Shot by Nicole Bentley in New Zealand, it stars Emilia Skuza (left, above) and Melissa “MJ” Johannsen, who appear to be channelling not so much David Lynch as Alfred Hitchcock, with cateye makeup and windswept '60s flips. Neither model had previously been featured anywhere in the magazine and although Johannsen was one of the stars of the Rosemount Australian Fashion Week runways earlier this month in Sydney, Skuza has never worked at the event – and was in fact booked sight unseen by Vogue according to Chadwick. But regular readers of this blog may recall both names. We first encountered MJ in November at the Adelaide Fashion Festival when the Alice Springs resident had been modelling for a matter of weeks. And Adelaide-bred Skuza popped up on our radar in January, after emerging at the Paris haute couture shows. Both girls went on to walk in a number of top Fall/Winter 2011/2012 shows in New York, London and Paris in February and March. 

Finesse Models’ Brigette Mitchell is, naturally, one very proud mother agent.  

She told frockwriter, “I’m thinking per capita re models, not bad that Adelaide and Finesse in particular should get two girls in the same issue, in the same story. I just think it’s hilarious. It shows that good girls are coming from Adelaide”.

all images: nicole bentley for vogue australia, via viviens management facebook

A new MJ is born

finesse

Just touched down in Adelaide, where frockwriter is the guest of the South Australian Tourism Commission and the City of Norwood, Payneham & St Peters. We were invited to cover the third incarnation of the Adelaide Fashion Festival, which runs from today until Saturday 13th November. Having never been to Adelaide, it seemed like a great opportunity to check out the local talent. We knew it wouldn't be too long before some emerged. Meet Melissa Johannsen aka "MJ" - who looks like the love child of Uma Thurman and Elvis Presley. She’s 15, lives in Alice Springs and up until last month, had never previously set foot inside a model agency. In Adelaide with her mother in early October doing a spot of shopping, the 5’11" schoolgirl was encouraged by one sales assistant to contact local agency Finesse Models. Within two days, she had won the Finesse Colonnades International Model Search competition. And since Monday last week, she has travelled to and from Sydney, been signed by Viviens Sydney and Wilhelmina Models in New York, walked in a Starlight Foundation runway show, shot a campaign for the Colonnades shopping centre, a lookbook for local label Finders Keepers and an editorial story and cover for this weekend's Sunday Mail magazine. “She’s the hot new face coming out of Adelaide.........via Alice Springs” said Finesse director Brigette Mitchell, who has previously launched Vanessa Milde, Kirsty MacPhail, Lucy Bayet and Emile Wake. The big question.... can she moonwalk?
  

Codie Young covers Vogue Australia

Earlier this month, frockwriter revealed that 17 year-old Sunshine Coast schoolgirl Codie Young would be gracing the cover of the October 2010 edition of Vogue Australia. Well here it is, courtesy of the Facebook page of Viviens Management (and swiftly spreading across the net) supplied by Vogue, a much better quality version. Incidentally, Young wears the same embellished Fall/Winter 2010/2011 Miu Miu dress that appeared on the covers of four international fashion titles in August, twice in lilac and twice in orange. Shot by Nicole Bentley, the image is part of a 12-page story called 'Lace value' which also features Rosemary Smith.

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

Tiah Eckhardt ties the knot, confirms Eres, auditions for X Men

tim bret-day for agent provocateur

Frockwriter must admit that we did a double take when we saw the shots rolling in of last night's Christian Dior Fall/Winter 2009/2010 haute couture show in Paris, which was staged in the grounds of the Rodin Museum. One model appeared to be a dead ringer for Australia's Tiah Eckhardt. The model in question was, in fact, Sweden's Frida Gustavsson (number 24 in this Style.com pic gallery of the show). As it turns out, Eckhardt was otherwise occupied yesterday, and coincidentally in her own garden of earthly delights: marrying her babydaddy Patrick Delaney in front of a small group of friends in the Rose Garden at Centennial Park. The bride wore? Not Dior haute couture, but a vintage strapless white leather minidress. The happy couple may soon be about to celebrate some other very exciting news. No, not another baby - Eckhardt revealed to frockwriter that she has just auditioned for one of (numerous) upcoming instalments of the X Men film franchise.

These include X Men: First Class, in which James McEvoy and Michael Fassbender have already been cast, with Twentieth Century Fox reportedly also interested in Twilight star Taylor Lautner.

This could be a very interesting career move for redhead bombshell who already has quite the cult following, following her appearances in French Playboy and a raft of other art titles, in addition to an advertising campaign for high profile British lingerie brand Agent Provocateur.

Eckhardt also confirmed that she did indeed shoot a campaign for iconic French lingerie and swimwear brand Eres earlier this year in Paris - as first reported by frockwriter. The shoot was with David Bellemere, with whom Eckhardt had previously worked for French Marie Claire. Currently fronted by Lara Stone, Eckhardt's campaign was shot a year in advance she reports.

Eckhardt was unable to provide any other details regarding X Men, beyond the fact that she auditioned in Sydney for the Christine King casting agency, which contacted her through her mother agency, Viviens (two other Viviens models also did the X Men audition). Coincidentally, Viviens also represents Gemma Ward.

With Ward already cast in Pirates of the Caribbean 4 and recently auditioning for Mad Max 4, might we soon be witnessing the summer of the Australian model-turned-action heroine?

Forever Young

 nicole bentley for vogue australia/viviens

Queensland continues to springboard stellar modelling talent. After Catherine McNeil, Alyssa Sutherland, Samantha Harris and Jordan Coulter, comes 17 year-old Sunshine Coast schoolgirl Codie Young. Modelling for just a few months and flown in as an exclusive for the Ellery show at Rosemount Australian Fashion Week in May, on Wednesday the first of three Vogue Australia editorials reportedly due to feature Young will be published. She appears in an only-girl story shot by Nicole Bentley in the August edition - part of a larger, 36-page fashion spread in the issue starring six Australian models, each with their own five-page section (Nicole Trunfio, Lauren Brown, Julia Nobis, Rosemary Smith and Samantha Harris). Young's Gold Coast mother agency, Busy Models, reports she has been signed to DNA in New York, Viva in Paris and London and will finish her HSC before embarking on her first international show season in February.  
Vogue ed Kirstie Clements is said to be “obsessed” with Young. Frockwriter will take a punt that casting director Russell Marsh and at least one of his high profile clients, Prada, may well be too.

Obviously it’s incredibly early days for Young but nevertheless, you have to ask, with such depth of Australian modelling talent featured in this issue, why on earth Vogue went for such a bland, commercial-looking - and in fact totally rehashed cover of Cameron Diaz?






all images: nicole bentley for vogue australia via viviens

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.