Reuben Ramacher covers i-D

via i-D's facebook

Frockwriter mentioned in January that new Australian face Reuben Ramacher may have even bigger things ahead of him than that month's Saint Laurent show during the Paris menswear collections. And voilà, here he is on the cover of British style bible i-D magazine, shot by Saint Laurent creative director Hedi Slimane. 

Reuben Ramacher rocks Saint Laurent Paris

saint laurent paris FW1314 via style.com

As it emerges, Julia Nobis wasn't the only Australian in Hedi Slimane's must-anticipated menswear show in Paris overnight. Joining her and a cast of real world rockers: brand new face Reuben Ramacher. Who apparently has even bigger things ahead of him. 

Hedi Slimane unplugged

saint laurent paris FW1314 via style.com

Julia Nobis just cemented her position as fashion's coolest girl by closing Hedi Slimane's much-anticipated menswear runway debut for Saint Laurent Paris. She wasn't the only woman on this season's menswear runways – nor the only woman in the Saint Laurent show – but the brand's new creative director Hedi Slimane obviously has a soft spot for the Australian tomboy, casting her in his womenswear and menswear show debuts for the storied Paris maison, as well as the Spring/Summer 2013 womenswear campaign. And the feeling is, evidently, mutual. "Awesome" is the word Nobis used to describe working with Slimane when we caught up with her at last month's Australian Fashion Foundation party in Sydney. 

Hedi Christmas

A short film by Hedi Slimane, created for V Man and starring - who else but - a beautiful, half-naked, excruciatingly skinny 16 year-old boy. In this case, Oscar Nilsson from the Royal Danish Ballet Company. Apparently still an 'apprentice' with the company, perhaps Nilsson was scouted during one of Slimane's infamous "boy safaris".

Cole Mohr and the trench coat mafia

slam pigs

After all the female model bloggers we have looked at over the past 12 months, frockwriter was interested to spot Slam Pigs, the new-ish blog from 23 year-old Texan Cole Mohr, who has been omnipresent over the past two years. Before he recently told Nylon Guys that “I didn’t want to be a model because I didn’t also want to be a hooker [laughs]”, Mohr told The Fashion Spot that he entered the fashion world when, “I was homeless. got scouted. while smoking ***EDIT***”. Considering that Mohr’s first modelling gig was reportedly a Dior Homme campaign in 2006, one might well assume he was scouted by former Dior Homme creative director Hedi Slimane. In January 2007, Mohr opened the Dior Homme Fall/Winter 07/08 show and has been working steadily since for luxury names including Lanvin, Costume National and Balenciaga, as well as H&M and Marc by Marc Jacobs. In the latter's unforgettably androgynous Juergen Teller-lensed Fall 08/09 campaign, Mohr was dressed in both the mens and womens collection.

In a model blog story overnight, Refinery29 warned readers that the blog was NSFW. Not only is the blog not safe for work, its explicit content has been flagged by Blogger. And with good reason. It’s rather twisted - and not necessarily in a David Fincher/Mark Romanek/Nine Inch Nails kind of way.

The blog appears to take its name from the slang term slam pig, which has multiple meanings, notably a derogatory sexual reference to women.

It contains images and videos of animal carcasses, dead bodies, mutant animals, knives, guns, decapitations, vomiting, fellatio, guns, slaughter, road kill, guns, sadomasochists being tortured, funerals, car crashes, explosions, guns, mutant body builders, pigs, blood, wounds, police mug shots, identikit sketches, bukkake and swastikas. Oh and cute animals – the latter fortunately among very few subjects who do not appear to have been tortured.

The blog also depicts various slogans, which include (accompanied by an image of the late child beauty pageant star, JonBenét Ramsey):

STOP BEING RAPED

And not forgetting:

BURN JEWS
BURN OUT THE RICH
HATE, KILL
FAGS DESERVE TO DIE

No idea if Mohr was in fact homeless at any stage of his early life – or whether that was just an interview embellishment. Life is of course tough on the streets. Particularly tough for young homeless boys with pretty faces. Even tougher for young, homeless, pretty straight boys.

Ranked the world number 17 male model by models.com, Mohr was ranked the world number four top-earning male model in 2008 by Forbes.com, which made its calculations based on magazine covers, spreads, advertising campaigns, contracts and runway shows over the previous two seasons.

In 2009 however, Mohr slipped six places to number 10 on the same Forbes list.

Like every other business, the modelling industry has not been immune to the impact of the recession. In July last year Steven Priebe from Sydney's Chadwick Models told this blog that US catalogue work for male models had virtually dried up overnight due to ad cutbacks.

Last week, Chadwick Melbourne director Matthew Anderson told this blog that the past 12 months had witnessed a significant pullback in the mens modelling market from the fashionably skinny and androgynous look championed by Hedi “heroin chic” Slimane, to a more conservative beefcake look.

Noted Anderson, “Within a three month period we went from scrawn to brawn”.

Of course, another former Slimane star, Randy Johnston, didn't live to see the market turnaround. Johnston died last October from a heroin overdose.

The fall of scrawny, androgynous Mohr on Forbes' top-earning models list may well have had something to do with this market shift.

But who knows what - if any - impact the blog has had on his professional image.

In a post entitled "I am a supermodel" Mohr makes a sterling effort to live up to his reputation:




slam pigs

Caveman of the fashion apocalypse

hedi slimane

Well it seems official. Jethro Cave is Australia’s next top male model. Anointed by a solitary SS09 runway appearance in October 2008 - Balenciaga - last week the 18 year-old popped up in a number of high profile menswear shows in Milan. And now comes this photo portfolio by the influential Hedi Slimane, the former creative director of, and campaign photographer for, Christian Dior Homme (who has just shot a campaign for Prada). Shot for online viewing purposes only according to models.com’s Wayne Sterling, the images are doing the rounds via hedislimane.com, Dazed & Confused's dazeddigital.com and the blog of London-based stylist Nicola Formichetti. Click here to see the complete portfolio. The images were styled by Formichetti – a co-engineer of the recent controversial Calvin Klein homage images for ponystep.com. Cave was not required to kneel in a corner, his hands behind his back, with the words “FUCK ME” scrawled in lipstick on his inner thighs - as was the case with another teen male model in the ponystep.com CK shoot. Looking a little more pretty boy glam rock than post-punk however, and styled up with womens' jewellery and makeup, Cave does nevertheless pose in his underwear.





hedi slimane

One amusing close-up shot shows a page from what appears to be Cave's personal diary, enscribed with the following hand-written statement in the Australian dialect:

"Youse cunt's are cunt's".

Now, it seems, Cave is going by the surname of his father, The Birthday Party/Bad Seeds frontman Nick Cave. That’s certainly how he is listed on London model agency website Independent.

This is interesting, given the fact that Cave first popped up on the Australian modelling radar at the 2006 Melbourne Fashion Festival as Jethro Lazenby, using the surname of his mother Beau Lazenby exclusively.

One month or so later, at the spring/summer 06/07 edition of Australian Fashion Week in Sydney – which Akira Isogawa opened, with Cave modelling – he was still going by the name Lazenby.

Several days before Isogawa's show, at an AFW casting call, the then 15 year-old told The Daily Telegraph:

"I've never wanted to live in his shadow but if I can make money out of it, why not?"

In 2007, Nicholas Morley hired Cave for promotional images for his Nicholas X Morley line.

Cave would not be the only celebrity progeny to gain a celeb-by-default legup in the fashion or film business.

A recent rollcall of rock offspring in modelling alone embraces Peaches and Pixie Geldof, Theodora Richards, Leah Wood, Elizabeth and Georgia Jagger, Kimberley Stewart, Daisy Lowe and Amber Le Bon. Not forgetting Elvis Presley’s granddaughter, Riley Keough.

How much interest would there be in any of these names were it not for the famous surname? In the case of Jethro Cave, it certainly seems to be providing additional buzz. A case in point the overnight mention on his personal blog The Imagist, Wayne Sterling notes:

“And how like his father is the boy. Powerful genes those”.

Here's a 1988 Polly Borland portrait FYI of Nick Cave in his late 20s, from the set of Ghosts of The Civil Dead.


polly borland via morgansmusings.wordpress.com

But Jethro Cave is not the only model in the Cave family.

Cave’s stepmom - Nick Cave’s wife of ten years, and mother of their twin sons Arthur and Earl – is erstwhile Vivienne Westwood muse, Susie Bick.