Frockwriter Live at MBFWA...and Frockwriter heads to Fellt

backstage at christopher esber SS1213/MBFWA

It’s that time of the year when we gather around the campfire that is Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week Australia and celebrate – or eviscerate – fashion design from the land down under. Since this journalist’s blogging career kicked off with live coverage of the event back in 2006 at smh.com.au and we have experimented with a number of different live coverage formats in the interim (e.g. last year's Fashion Week Uncut live blog, in tandem with Emma Ashton), it’s also the time of year when we usually try to come up with a fresh format for real-time coverage. Because that's just how we roll. This year it’s a newlook Frockwriter Live, the site we launched back in 2010 through the Posterous microblogging platform. Since Posterous is due to close at the end of April (sad face), we needed to find an alternative and this is it – for the moment. The newlook Frockwriter Live was developed with Johan Bergström and Daniel Kjellsson, aka Sydney Stockholm. Which brings me to the bigger picture Frockwriter news here: yes, we are hooking up with the Swedish house mafia. 

Merry Christmas from Frockwriter

melise williams, charlie brown AW13 backstage, auckland, september 2012 

Just a quick one to say Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to all of frockwriter's readers. It's been a bit of a watershed year for this blog – one during which, as many know, we took the controversial step of introducing a metered paywall. Oops. Unable to support ourselves through advertising alone and disinclined to accept potentially lucrative brand ambassadorships, sponsored posts and a raft of other commercial tie-ins from the industry on which we report - because of ethics considerations and genuine conflicts of interest - we assumed readers who value the blog for its independence would support it. Some have and a massive shoutout to our subscribers. Your support is truly appreciated - especially considering how flipping easy it has been for all those pesky freehadists (yes there's a term for you now) to defeat the paywall. In their thousands. I now have access to frockwriter's subscriber list and have been overwhelmed to learn just who these supporters are. So thank you!