Abbey Lee Kershaw walks Chanel (again), makes world number 6

chanel haute couture FW1011/getty via daylife

The haute couture shows roll on and overnight, to the best of frockwriter’s knowledge, Abbey Lee Kershaw was the first Australian model to pop up therein – at Chanel. This is no surprise, as Kershaw has spent the past eight months forging a powerful alliance with the iconic French couture house and its German creative director, Karl Lagerfeld. Kershaw closed Chanel’s Spring/Summer 2010 haute couture show in January, opened its Fall/Winter 2010/2011 ready to wear show in March and appears in both the Spring/Summer 2010 ad campaigns for Lagerfeld’s own collection and the Fall/Winter 2010/2011 Chanel campaign. Back in December, during an interview for Australian current affairs program Today Tonight (only a fraction of which made it to air) Kershaw told me that she was moving on from Italian luxury goods house Gucci, with which she had booked four campaigns – although in everything other than the Flora by Gucci campaign, as part of a group of bigger name models. But Kershaw’s star is definitely on the rise. Since December, beyond her Chanel coups, she has appeared on ten magazine covers. Today Tonight asked, could she make it to number 1? Well she's getting closer - models.com just upgraded her ranking to world number 6.

Click here to see more of Chanel's sumptuous haute couture collection on Style.com. And here is a video shot by Bryanboy from his front row seat:




WWD appears not to have included the couture shows as part of its regular free runway show coverage, so see Style.com also for highres of Armani Privé, Christian Dior and Givenchy. The Givenchy collection (that was inspired by Frida Kahlo and Mexico's Day of the Dead) is particularly beautiful: a tightly-edited presentation of heavily-embellished, mermaid-like sheaths in white, ecru and gold.

So which other Australians are in town for the haute couture?

Stephanie Carta has been Tweeting from fittings, although it’s not clear which shows she is up for.

Last weekend, Carta mentioned she was at the Elie Saab studio and several weeks ago, made reference to Karl Lagerfeld’s “black bride”, although whether this was second-hand info from someone who did attend a fitting or something sighted in the Chanel atelier for either the show or a private client is also unclear. Perhaps Lagerfeld changed his mind - his FW1011 bride overnight was in traditional white.

Priscillas reports that its white hot new faces Julia Nobis and Emily Wake are both confirmed for today’s Valentino show.