Liv life

thom kerr

Whatever happened to Olivia O’Driscoll? In 2008, at age 17, she emerged as one of New Zealand’s most promising modelling newcomers. Repped internationally by IMG, she walked in four Paris haute couture shows in July that year, before flying to to Milan on an exclusive option for the Spring/Summer 2009 Prada and Miu Miu shows. While those gigs never eventuated, she nevertheless shot editorial for French Elle, German Vogue, Japanese RUSSH, Wallpaper, AnOther Magazine, US Teen Vogue and Italy’s Amica. Only to suddenly drop out of the business, sparking various rumours. In spite of the fact that New Zealand has the second-highest rate of teenage pregnancies in the developed world, a pregnancy was not among these whispers. But a baby daughter, Hara Lea O’Driscoll, arrived a day after O'Driscoll's 20th birthday in December 2010. Now as a single mum, with new management back home in Auckland (Red Eleven/MHI) and Sydney (Chadwick) - and as “Liv” O’Driscoll, as she prefers to be known these days - she is attempting a comeback. She joins models Jourdan Dunn, Arizona Muse, Natalia Vodianova and Australia’s Cassi van den Dungen, all of whom took time out under the age of 20 to have children. Herewith an exclusive preview of some new test shots by Australian photographer Thom Kerr.

Flynn Bloom likes the limelight, Miranda Kerr thinks her drug-free labour was "a bit crazy"

celebkids.whyfame.com

Miranda Kerr is in town, as you know, spruiking David Jones. Below is a quick video chat backstage after last Wednesday’s runway show starring Kerr, in which she concedes that she found the prospect of doing the DJs' show in a swimsuit just seven months after giving birth “a little nerve-wracking” and confirms that she will be back on Victoria’s Secret runway later in the year. When asked what is the best thing about motherhood, Kerr notes “Everything, I just love it. There’s no word that could describe the joy and loveliness that it is to be a mother”. Undergoing a 27 hour labour without drugs may have given the supermod pause for some reflection however. She told frockwriter, “I was kind of a bit crazy not to but you know, I’d made my mind up and I’ll probably just see how I go next time”. As for Flynn, arguably the most overexposed baby on the planet right now, Kerr reveals that it’s a tough job trying not to give paps their money shots whenever she’s been out and about with Flynn in recent months. “You try your best to avoid it but it’s inevitable. And he was really into it. I tried to like, protect him but he comes around [flicks her head around, mimicking Flynn] because he likes the light”.

Cassi van den Dungen won't be doing Alex Perry's show because it's not OK!

Less than 24 hours after we reported that Cassi van den Dungen would not be appearing at next week’s Rosemount Australian Fashion Week because she is four months pregnant, there have been a couple of developments. Upon learning the real reason why van den Dungen was mysteriously unavailable for runway bookings this season, frockwriter can reveal that earlier today, Alex Perry attempted to fly her up to walk in his show tomorrow morning. Perry, who cast van den Dungen in his Cuban Princess show at last month’s Melbourne Fashion Festival (above) and spoke to her agent this morning, has been told that van den Dungen is in fact five months along. “She won’t open it, but we’ve used her in shows before and I think she’s a really beautiful girl” said Perry this morning. “She’s five months pregnant. She’s probably not showing much. But even if she is, she’s still beautiful. Miranda walked for Balenciaga and she was fully pregnant”. We won't be seeing van den Dungen tomorrow, however, because Perry's plans have been nixed by OK! magazine, which bought the exclusive rights to the pregnancy story and won't release her from a contract which precludes any public engagements until May 14th. 

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.

Tiah Eckhardt counts her lovers

Frockwriter mentioned that Tiah Eckhardt was awaiting the birth of a baby with partner Patrick Delaney. Well Oz director Alex Goddard just flicked us over this little video he shot for CLUBFEET’s new 'Count Your Lovers' single starring Eckhardt - and apparently just three weeks after the birth of her adorable baby girl Finley Victoria, who arrived in October. Sources say Eckhardt is also to be a face of Berlei, so it looks as if she’s not giving up on modelling at all.

Some mothers do 'ave 'em - fashion careers

dailymail.co.uk

Collette Dinnigan has been the subject of quite some online coverage of late - and it reveals rather a lot about her latterday role as a working mother. In the past month alone this has included two profiles on British Vogue's website vogue.com and a Q&A on Fairfax’s Essential Baby, which describes itself as the largest online parenting community - and one of the largest women's communities – in Australia. On the subject of Estella, Dinnigan’s four year-old daughter with former partner Richard Wilkins, who Dinnigan is raising as a single mother, Essential Baby asks a number of probing questions. These include what Dinnigan plans to serve Estella for dinner that night (grilled salmon fillet with broccoli), where she feels she excels as a mother (“nurturing and embracing Estella’s individuality & creativity”) and in which areas Dinnigan feels that she is guilty of motherhood fail (“bedtime & discipline”).

Vogue.com’s June 10 diary meanwhile, revealed that Dinnigan’s day starts at 6.30am and finishes 16 hours later.

In between - in addition to running a global fashion company - Dinnigan says she gets Estella up and ready for school, has breakfast with Estella, makes Estella’s lunch, drops Estella at school en route to the office – and returns home at 6.30pm to “relieve” a nanny, who has presumably picked Estella up from school. Dinnigan then prepares Estella for "bed and story time".

Dinnigan’s work day does not however finish at 6.30pm because she is at it again from 9.00pm, making calls to the UK and Europe in their office hours and also vetting emails and signing off on paperwork that needs to be done. As indeed would anyone who is running any kind of international business.

No, it’s not a timetable for the faint-hearted – or those who would prefer a 9-5 job working for someone else, a weekly pay cheque, including weekends, holidays, sick pay, superannuation – and now in Australia, paid maternity leave (from January 2011). All paid for by the employer who, of course, is obligated by law to pay all of this, irrespective of whether or not they have themselves actually been paid.

But it’s a path chosen by those who are prepared to work their guts out, often against extremely difficult odds and business pressures, currency fluctuations, bad timing, bad luck, bad weather, ripoff merchants - not to mention crappy show reviews - in the dream of building a business, a brand or a body of work.

Which is why I found myself doing a double-take after reading the following question from Essential Baby general manager – and apparently chief Australian Mommy Nazi - Melina Cruikshank:

“Have there been times when you’ve considered giving up your work to become a full time mum?”

Dinnigan may have also been taken aback by the question, because she skirts the issue with the following answer:

“I'm always exhausted at the end of designing a collection so often I don't know if I have it in me to do another. But I always find some inspiration somewhere to do it again”.

Of course, many female professionals have talked about the challenges involved in juggling careers with motherhood. In the fashion arena, many manage to combine both.

Perhaps there was no greater illustration of these challenges than when Phoebe Philo, the former creative director of French luxury brand Chloé, quit the high-profile brand in 2006 at the peak of her success, in order to focus on her family.

Three years later, Philo is back at work and has just unveiled her first collection for rival French luxury brand Céline.

Philo was of course merely an employee at Chloé, not the owner of the Chloé business. And you have to wonder if Chloé had been her own label, whether she would have made the same decision.

Stella McCartney on the other hand - who Philo succeeded at Chloé, when McCartney was lured over by Gucci Group to launch her eponymous label in 2001 - has had three children in quick succession, with no interruption to her design schedule.

There is something incredibly condescending about asking a successful businesswoman such as Dinnigan whether she would throw in her fashion business in order to concentrate on being a stay-at-home mum. Firstly, it implies that there is nothing serious, or important, about Dinnigan's business. At the very least, it directly employs a number of people, from Dinnigan's office staff to sales consultants in her three standalone boutiques in Australia and London.

Secondly, Dinnigan's savings notwithstanding, it implies there is someone waiting in the wings to support her when she is no longer bringing home the bacon - and presumably, a man.

And, moreover, as suggested by one fashion industry working mother whose opinion I just canvassed - who described the question as “insulting” - you just can't imagine the same question being asked of a man.

Coincidentally, on Essential Baby's masterlist of 20 ‘Mum In Profile’ interviews of working mothers, this question was only asked of the four business owners on the list: designers Dinnigan and Fiona Scanlan, beauty entrepreneur Natalie Bloom and Merino Kids founder and ceo Amie Nilsson (and author Kathy Lette).

The other interviewees were mostly television and radio presenters and entertainment figures (the tv/radio component of which would obviously be network employees).

While all those asked the question by Essential Baby reply firmly in the negative, Bloom and Scanlan do hint that they have entertained fleeting moments of giving it all away.

However when Scanlan says she has occasionally considered swapping her business for the stay-at-home mum option, she is referring to her four year-old childrenswear label BIG by Fiona Scanlan.

As distinct from Scanlan & Theodore, the fashion brand she co-founded with Gary Theodore in Melbourne in 1987 – and which Scanlan did abandon in 2002, in order to concentrate on her family and leave it to Theodore.

While BIG by Fiona Scanlan has been successful, Scanlan’s profile as a fashion designer has definitely waned since her departure from Scanlan & Theodore. Already well en route to becoming one of Australia’s most influential designer labels prior to her departure, the brand has since gone on to emerge as a powerful monobrand retailer.

In her March 4 Q&A with Essential Baby Scanlan implied that she launched a childrenswear label because of a non-compete clause with Theodore.

Talking about the pressures of raising a family while designing fulltime, Scanlan told Essential Baby:

“Scanlan & Theodore was started without children and then children came along. I always had the feeling that children remained second in that world. Nobody had children at work and there was an expectation that you were to be available whenever was required and that is very difficult to maintain long term – organised or not….Children don’t fit into boxes or time frames and so work really has to have some sort of malleability to it. I ended up feeling rushed, frayed and the feeling I wasn’t doing anything particularly well”.

On March 3 2008, the host of ABC Radio’s Talking Heads program, Peter Thompson, managed to get a lot more out of Dinnigan than Essential Baby.

Thompson talked to Dinnigan about the pressures of being at the top of her profession. Dinnigan replied that there is a cost - but that is not less time with Estella.

Dinnigan noted:

“There's definitely a price to pay. I think there's more loneliness”.

Of the business pressures in general Dinnigan told Thompson,

“There are days where I most definitely, definitely, can leave it behind”.

On motherhood and what ultimately drives – and creatively satisifies - her, Dinnigan noted:

“I was exceptionally driven, you know, up until having my daughter. My priorities have changed. And I sometimes think I've lost it but then having more time I can see ideas... I just can't leave it alone. Even to go on holiday to stay in a hotel, it's just not right. I can't help myself, I have to pull back and just relax and not worry about it, so then think "Will I do my own hotel?"

Tiah Eckhardt: Up the duff - and blogging

pedestrian.tv

Joyous news for Tiah Eckhardt, who is four months pregnant with her first child - to fellow model Patrick Delaney (^), according to Pedestrian.tv (via Sassybella). Sadly, due to Pedestrian.tv's liberal comments moderation policy, one party has marred the happy occasion by suggesting someone else (a tad more high profile) may be the daddy. Now you could be forgiven for thinking Eckhardt’s pregnancy comes at an awkward time for this Australian sex bomb, who seems to have difficultly keeping her clothes on in magazines. Although a near fullterm Demi Moore once appeared naked on the cover of Vanity Fair, there would appear to be a limited market for pregnant nudie spreads and toilet cubicle/pole dancing videos.

Pedestrian.tv also drew our attention to the facts that a/Eckhardt recently joined the model blogging ranks and b/her writing has attracted the attention of an Australian media outlet, which is said to have engaged Eckhardt as a blogger during next week’s RAFW. Frockwriter is sure that the blog’s plethora of nude self-portraits had absolutely nothing to do with things.

But while Eckhardt’s blog does show evidence of the self-absorbed angst exhibited, although to a less articulate degree, in the since-deleted first blog of her model mate, Stephanie Carta, some of it is quite entertaining.

And there is more than a hint of bitterness about the modelling industry.

In a post dated April 7, entitled “When the N-Y-C ain’t what it used to be (and why the ‘fashion’ industry will kill U)", Eckhardt notes:

“Don’t do heroin....Anyone over 20 that actually wants to be a model is fucking stupid. If it hasn't happened by now it's not gonna happen and no matter how many photographers you fuck or parties you go to or amount of blow you do at 7am is going to change that.

"Speaking of afters, that scene is over anyhow-now, don't you know, everyone iN New York is either cleaning up, cleaning out or killing themselves slowly? Were in a recession and your great depression is your own repression so don't think you can get someone else to buy you self-esteem in a fifty bag, when we've got bills to pay and people to actually care about.

“The cool thing to do now is stay at home, order in, bake cookies, watch cult-classics on-demand, get a dog, get a job, get a life, hang out, go to the park, go to the beach, stop breathing dirty air and just. start. breathing. So were gonna play scrabble and make mexican, make a coffee table, make babies, make money and roll around in the backyard grass with more abandon than that time me and L rolled around on the couches at Beatrice punching each other in the face and making out because it was giggleicous, summer 07 and the ride was still fine and fun”.

Congratulations to Eckhardt and Delaney. Frockwriter wishes them all the best.

And baby makes five

getty

Anyone too polite to ask just what Rachel Griffiths might have been hiding under that gold toga-style Ralph Rucci gown at last week’s Golden Globes, here is your answer: congrats are due to Griffiths and Andrew Taylor who are indeed expecting their third child. Griffiths just confirmed the news to People magazine – and the story has been spreading across the net (although apparently not as far as Australia just yet), as if the new Griffiths-Taylor could be the Second Coming. The Brothers & Sisters star and her artist husband are already parents to five year-old Banjo Patrick and three year-old Adelaide Rose. Frockwriter is taking bets that the third will be called Ned, Sydney, Lawson, Matilda, Nellie, Melba or Rolf.