Johnson & yet more johnson: Australia's fashion phallocracy taking over the world?

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In the words of the great Maude Lebowski - whose work, as those familiar with the cult 1998 Coen Brothers film The Big Lebowski would recall, is commended as being strongly vaginal - “Without batting an eye a man will refer to his dick or his rod or his Johnson”. And indeed, particularly in Australia. Overnight Gawker tittered over a new series of Belgian condom advertisements which dress up male genitalia as various public figures and fictional characters. Frockwriter feels the need to point out the antipodian fashion origins of the campaign.

Here is the Gawker post, which has one image - however Gawker does link to two other ad industry blogs which picked the story up first, both of which show more.

And yes a warning here, the material is definitely NSFW.

As saucy as the Belgians may be, this campaign would appear to be a complete ripoff of a 2006 campaign created by Australian denim/streetwear brand Ksubi, which dressed up a bunch of, quite literally, dicks, to showcase its new sunglasses collection.

The images were published in the Ksubi Sunglasses for Dickheads calendar and exhibited in a series of art galleries from late 2006. Here’s a link to a blog showing some of the Ksubi images.

But frockwriter can’t help thinking that the, ahem, grassroots, origins of the trend may owe more than a meagre debt to yet another Australian - Simon Morley.

In 1997, Morley came up with the term Puppetry of the Penis for what he describes on the POTP website as a “highbrow art calendar” launched that year to showcase 12 of his best “dick tricks”.

“Genital gesticulation” or “genital origami”, according to the website, is a Morley family talent. Initially demonstrated by younger brother Justin, the technique was later perfected by Simon who, together with "fellow puppeteer" David Friend, went on to present the inaugural Puppetry of the Penis performance at the 1998 Melbourne International Comedy Festival.

The company has since performed in over 14 countries, with eight consecutive appearances at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.

What’s Morley’s connection to fashion?

Simon Morley is the brother and business partner of Nicholas Morley, launch designer of the Buddhist Punk label, who last year unveiled his new streetwear label Nicholas X Morley.

So that’s right, behind the Nicholas X Morley label, as Simon Morley quipped at a photoshoot in April last year, is “dick money”.

It seems they didn't call Australia a penal colony for no reason...