Frockwriter's Top 10 posts of 2012

We usually flag the top posts of the previous 12 months on Frockwriter’s July 4 birthday each year. This year we opted instead to focus on some of the challenges – and frustrations - of trying to maintain an independent news blog, whilst avoiding getting sucked into the vortex of the blogger gravy train. So here is a list of our top stories for 2012, rated by traffic. The year’s number one post, Close encounters of the KL kind – which attracted over 20,000 hits - is incidentally also one of the top posts in this blog's four and a half year history. It's also a story on which we personally received considerable feedback, from people who contacted us to say how much they enjoyed reading it. Not bad for a post that we originally hesitated publishing at all, because of its length and potential TLDR factor – “too long didn’t read” being the mantra of many when confronted with longform pieces on the net.

Katerina Chang is the bomb

Frockwriter first noticed Katerina Chang at the David Jones show in Sydney last month. As it emerges, it is no surprise that we haven't seen that much of her. Living in Australia for four years, initially studying a marketing degree at the University of Western Sydney, this 21 year-old Taiwanese beauty with Marlene Dietrich cheekbones first walked into the Sydney offices of Chadwick Models in July last year. She has been quietly building a body of work.

The butterfly effect: Why couldn't Toni Maticevski take over the reins at Christian Dior?

Frockwriter popped down to Melbourne last week for the last leg of the L’Oréal Melbourne Fashion Festival (as a guest of the organisers, once again). Among the shows we caught was Toni Maticevski’s 'Red Carpet Runway' on Thursday night, which closed the event with 50 looks from Maticevski’s archive of 2000 pieces, collected since he launched his demi-couture label in 1999. There were plenty of his signature, heavily-embellished ballgowns and shorter, artfully-deconstructed tailored pieces that have made their way to New York Fashion Week, The Grammys, the Cannes Film Festival and a raft of other events on the backs of celebrities such as Beyoncé, Scarlett Johannson, Leighton Meester, Christina Ricci, Abbie Cornish, Gemma Ward and Kim Kardashian. At 35, Maticevksi is exactly the same age as was John Galliano in 1996, when the latter was appointed as the creative director of the storied Parisian haute couture house of Christian Dior. With Galliano fired last year, there is a vacant position to fill. Suspend your disbelief for a moment that an Australian designer could ever be considered for the creative director’s role of a major Paris fashion house (Martin Grant FYI once turned down the Céline gig) and ponder the hypothetical question, why couldn’t Maticevski fill Galliano’s shoes?

From ANTM to ICU: Alice Burdeu's adventures in Ellison-land

screen grab, 'an ode to the muse'

Becoming the winner of the Australia's Next Top Model series can lead to many things. An international modelling career, if you are lucky - and it looks like the Australian show's winners are having more luck than most at the moment. Over the weekend at Melbourne's Australian Centre For The Moving Image, Cycle 3 winner Alice Burdeu made her screen debut - well, at least her film festival screen debut - at Justin Watson's and Alastair McCann's No Home fashion film festival, as part of the cultural calendar of the L'Oréal Melbourne Fashion Festival, which officially kicks off tomorrow. Burdeu is the star of a short film called 'An Ode to the Muse', that was shot by Melbourne's Tooth & Claw collective for Sydney fashion label Ellison. For anyone who didn't catch No Home, here is a first look at the film. It's an intriguing little plotline.

Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week Australia SS1213: The Survivor edition

So Australian Fashion Week is back in its third incarnation from April 30th to May 4th. Founded in 1996 as Mercedes Australian Fashion Week, Rosemount became the naming rights sponsor in 2007 and now, five years later, Mercedes-Benz is back on deck, to the reported tune of AUD 1million. The new official title is Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week Australia. For the past four years we have pulled together a preview schedule ahead of organiser IMG Fashion Asia Pacific's official schedule release. So here we go again. Why so soon? Because earlier this week IMG went out with a press release - unusually, some nine weeks ahead of the event - to announce which designers are on board so far this season. Could the timing of this release have anything to do with next week's L'Oréal Melbourne Fashion Festival? We have a hunch it might. UPDATE 07/04: FINAL CONFIRMED SCHEDULE BELOW, VIA MBFWA. UPDATE 16/04: BOTH DION LEE AND JOSH GOOT HAVE NOW CANCELLED THEIR MBFWA SHOWS. 

Cassi van den Dungen won't be doing RAFW because she's four months pregnant

One face that we won't be seeing at next week's Rosemount Australian Fashion Week is 18 year-old Cassi van den Dungen. That's because van den Dungen is four months pregnant and is taking a year off from modelling. Although suspicions first arose that something was up several days ago, yesterday's publication of an interview with van den Dungen and her fiancé Brad Saul in the Australian edition of OK magazine, announcing the pregnancy, appears to have completely flown under the radar - no doubt due to the Royal wedding media frenzy. Van den Dungen managed to keep her pregnancy a secret at last month's Melbourne Fashion Festival, where these photos (above, below) were taken. No mean feat, considering how body-hugging some of the garments were.

"I'm obsessed with models" - Melissa George

Since departing these shores in the mid 1990s, following a three year stint playing Angel Brooks on Australian soap Home & Away, Melissa George has established herself as a queen of the US small screen. Notwithstanding a few features, notably Dark City, Mulholland Drive, The Amityville Horror and 30 Days of Night, George’s CV is replete with a score of American tv movies and series, including Roar, Murder Call, LA Confidential, Friends, Charmed, Alias, In Treatment and Grey’s Anatomy. Her latest small screen effort: Australian production The Slap, whose current filming schedule downunder facilitated her participation in last week’s L’Oréal Melbourne Fashion Festival as the event’s official ambassador. Frockwriter caught up with George on Friday night – four years after we chatted to her backstage at New York Fashion Week. This time, she demonstrated that she is as much of an ambassador for the Argentinian fashion industry, as she is for its Australian equivalent, and offered a fascinating theory to explain the sudden proliferation of top Australian models - or at least those hailing from her native Perth. 

Frankie's gold class - LMFF 2011

Frockwriter’s last LMFF was Friday night’s L’Oréal Paris Runway 6 showcase presented by Frankie magazine. Fantastic, upbeat show featuring some great Australasian brands, from Alice McCall to Karen Walker, Kate Sylvester, Alpha60, Dhini, Limedrop and Nevenka, with cool girl styling that perfectly reflected Frankie’s fresh-faced readership, courtesy Jolyon Mason. Not to mention some new faces, notably 17 year-old Gracie Holt (above), who opened the show and walked in four other shows last week. Modelling for just three months, Holt hails from Alice Springs – making her the second great new girl to emerge from the Red Centre in five months, after 16 year-old Melissa 'MJ' Johannsen, who made an impressive debut at New York Fashion Week last month. Expect to see a lot more of both. Click (here) to see frockwriter's Posterous pic gallery shot backstage during the show.