Saturday, August 1, 2009

Catherine McNeil and Abbey Lee Kershaw steam it up for Vogue's 50th


greg kadel via models.com

In one of those frustrating moments that one encounters whilst straddling old and new media, on Thursday I was given 13 out of 28 pages of Greg Kadel's edgy 'Come as you are' spread in the upcoming September edition of Vogue Australia, which is out August 5 and celebrates the title's 50th birthday. As I tweeted before the launch, the story stars model mates Catherine McNeil and Abbey Lee Kershaw, who appear semi-nude in several shots. But while both models have disrobed for international magazines, even recently posing topless together in Terry Richardson's 2010 Pirelli calendar, you could count the number of times Vogue Australia has published arty images of bare breasts on one hand. Most likely, on several fingers. It's a beautiful editorial and one that Vogue's critics, who accuse the magazine of being staid, boring and useless, might well hope signals a gutsy new direction. I was given permission to blog the shots after Monday. Overnight, Kadel released four shots to models.com so they are now in the public domain.

Click here to see the rest.

Interestingly, MDC gave its blog post on Kadel's images the headline "Rubyfruit jungle", an obvious reference to McNeil's dalliance with Australian television personality Ruby Rose Langenheim.

This episode has provided an interesting illustration of how old media struggles to grasp the way new media works.

At time of writing this post News Ltd had yet to publish a single image of the September covers on any of its websites, including vogue.com.au and The Australian, in spite of the fact that the latter paper had first dibs on images of the covers in today's edition. For domestic readers who had access to the print edition, that is.

International publishers were offered the images for use on Monday - three days after the covers were first unveiled, effectively creating a double embargo.

Fashion fans, meanwhile, have already scanned the covers from today's print edition of The Australian and the images are wending their way across the net.

So much for control.


6 comments:

Anonymous said...

I agree that they've not understood how very helpful new media could have been in building brand awareness and anticipation of the 50th birthday and the September issue. I understand media exclusivity to the cover and that they have gone within the family, however I don't understand why the cover was embargoed up until yesterday. I know they probably wanted to reveal the cover at the party or in the Good Weekend, but that's so 'pre-internet'. Let the bloggers and tweeters get you further reach than traditional media ever could and give them a jpeg of the cover for goodness sake! Give trad media an exclusive interview (with Ed, cover star, whatever) and/or some additional pics from one of the spreads etc etc.

What's even more juvenile is why you were not given permission to publish content given to you by them until two days after the issue embargo was lifted. And why they would let poor quality scans pass for the cover in the meantime. Kind of lame really.

Style On Track said...

Im surprised they didn't go with a local artist for their cover? The covers are beautiful, I think I would just like to see more support of Aussie talent from an Australian published magazine :)

Impressionable Girl said...

sooooo coool, Im just soooo gettin me nips peirced now!!...

Anonymous said...

im so tired of Cahterine's nudity.

penny said...

why do so many aus models have their nips pierced?!

uncool said...

I was shocked when I saw Alice Burdeu had a nipple ring. My initial thought was that her agent must have told her to do it to make her more edgy.

I don't mind the nudity but its a bit of a shame that piercing clinics will now be loving Vogue

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