Australian women were all over this week’s haute couture runways in Paris - playing tag team, in fact, with their male counterparts, who wrapped up the Spring/Summer 2013 ready-to-wear menswear season in the City of Light last Sunday. Aussie male models continued their assault on the menswear market, with at least nine names nabbing blue chip shows in London, Milan and Paris. Leading the pack, once again, was Brisbane’s Angus Low who walked in 16 shows, with fellow Brisbanite, Joel Meacock and Byron Bay’s Kye D’Arcy, hot on Low’s heels.
Australian sportswear brand Marcs has been producing some cool advertising campaigns of late. Nabbing new Australian modelling superstar Julia Nobis was a good start of course. Nobis co-starred in the Spring/Summer 2010/2011 and Autumn/Winter 2011 campaigns with Broed Dilleward and Nick Hinman, respectively. Here is a first look at the SS1112 campaign, for which Marcs' creative director Rachel Allen has upped the ante with not two but five rising Australian stars: Chic's Rachel Rutt and Nicole Pollard, Viviens' Rosie Tupper, Priscillas' Andy Smith and EMG Models' Jack Vanderhart (who made his international debut at New York Fashion Week in February, with a Calvin Klein exclusive). Shot by Steven Chee, the campaign also showcases one of Australia's most beautiful sea baths: the heritage-listed Wylies Baths in Sydney's Coogee.
Abbey Lee Kershaw might have skipped New York Fashion Week this season, but rising up in her wake was no shortage of antipodian runway talent. If international casting directors did not already have Australian and New Zealand model agencies on speed dial, they will do from now on. Australia had at least 18 models at New York Fashion Week, seven of them brand new to the event and among those, several models with less than six months experience who scored some big shows. New Zealand now has its own potential modelling superstar. For the second consecutive season - and from the same agency, Auckland's Clyne Management - the Land of the Long White Cloud delivered a face to watch. And then some. After Jessica Clarke nabbed a Calvin Klein exclusive last season, a 17 year-old total unknown Kiwi by the name of Emily Baker walked in pretty much every major show of the week, prompting models.com to declare her its first Top 10 Newcomer of Fall/Winter 2011/2012 - and noting that Baker is now “on the watch list of every major casting director, photographer and editor in the trade”.
On Friday, frockwriter posted about the potentially bumper season of Australian models on New York Fashion Week's runways for the Fall/Winter 2011/2012 season, which commences on Thursday. Three days later, there's already an update. Meet Cronulla's Jack Vanderhart. Modelling for just a few months, the 17 year-old's portfolio includes one editorial in Vogue Australia, two Australian GQ editorials and a campaign for pyjama tycoon Peter Alexander. According to his mother agency EMG Models, Vanderhart is about to add something with a little more international resonance to that list: Calvin Klein exclusive. EMG reports that Vanderhart has just been confirmed for Calvin Klein's menswear show in New York at 2pm on Sunday 13th February. A Calvin Klein exclusive is considered a highly prestigious get for any new model and has the potential to launch their career. Sydney's Julia Nobis scored an exclusive with the womens' show last year.
