Wednesday, July 9, 2008

Australia's Next Top (male) Model



Cat McNeil isn't the only Australian to benefit from Mario Testino's magic model touch. Meet Josh Dagnall - who's just been shot by Testino for V Magazine.

According to a story today in PerthNow moreover, the 16 year-old from Rockingham, WA, has MySpace to thank for the Testino coup - even if, apparently, he had never heard of the venerated fashion snapper prior to posing for him.



Perth stylist Lincoln Ferguson reportedly spotted Dagnall on MySpace and then hooked him up with "Sydney agent" Kirk Blake. Blake, in fact, is not an agent but a Sydney-based fashion scout who consults to various agencies. Dagnall is now repped locally by Scene Models.



Confusingly, PerthNow reports that Dagnall was in Year 11 at Warnbro High School and had just started an electrical apprenticeship when he got the model call.

Dagnall himself puts his age down as 28 on his MySpace page.

In these portfolio shots from the Scene website, he certainly looks well-preserved.



MySpace is emerging as a major fashion sourcing force.

Last year Dazed & Confused creative director Nicola Formichetti, who also styles freelance for names such as Gareth Pugh, told the UK Telegraph that he does most of his casting and sourcing these days via MySpace.

Noted Formichetti:
"MySpace is endless – you're not restricted by a casting director's book any more. Most people I now use are too much for casting directors anyway, because they might have loads of piercings, or crazy colours in their hair."

2 comments:

Dataceptionist said...

Hi Patti
Just wanted to drop by to say sorry to hear Fully Chic was closing. I didn't read every week, but I've been reading sporadically every since that incident with the PR girl (can't remember the details??)

Looking forward to reading Frockwriter now :)

Just as a quick aside, were you shut down or did you move on? Yours is the third news.com.au blog I've seen close down in recent weeks, wondered if they're housekeeping or something?

~Dataceptionist

Patty Huntington said...

Hey there dataceptionist - I remember your handle. Don't be sorry about Fully Chic. It was a great year, we covered a lot of material and believe me, it's a luxury to be paid to write a fashion blog, certainly in the mainstream media arena. But you know, there does come a time when you realise that you can't be all things to all people and at the end of the day, you just have to be yourself. It's impossible to do that on someone else's website.

I planned to go blog-solo for a long time. My original Fully Chic signoff post was trimmed slightly. Out of my hands. But that's right, three blogs mysteriously closing at the end of June is a coincidence...

This new blog contains the beginnings of a complete archive of blogged work from April 06. Search 'SMH banned from NY Fashion Week' - that's the incident you mention. It's here. The 100+ (hilarious) comments of course remain on smh.com.au but I include a link.

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