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.

Close encounters of the KL kind

rose smith backstage at carl kapp's SS1112 show, sydney, may 2011

Publicists would disagree, but any journalist worth their salt will tell you the best stories never come straight off a press release. Occasionally that’s where they start, however. And so it was at 2.44pm on January 16th, when I received an email from Sydney-based fashion PR firm Little Hero headed “Malaysia’s First Lady covets Carl Kapp”, alerting me to what they were claiming would in anybody’s terms constitute an unusually large single, personal order of a designer brand - 61 items. Many designers wouldn't have 61 pieces in a single collection. The alleged client was Rosmah Mansor, the wife of Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak. I called Little Hero back within minutes. The story had been passed over by the fashion editors of two Australian newspapers, said Little Hero staffer Holly Beer, who immediately followed up with a second email, with yet more tantalising details. The second of two appointments had taken place in the PM’s hotel on New Year's Eve – as it emerged, The Star Sydney Casino’s new venue The Darling, the penthouse no less – with the PM himself present. After taking Rosmah's measurements and near six figure order, Kapp was due to be flown by the client to KL for a second round of fittings, said Beer. "It was unbelievably surreal" Kapp told me later that day. Indeed. No mention was made of Kapp being dispatched to KL in a Learjet but by this stage nothing would have surprised me. UPDATE 02/02/12: PM Najib has now gone on the record on Twitter about the Carl Kapp story. In response to a question about frockwriter's post, he described it as: "a wildly exaggerated story deliberately fabricated to affect people's perception of their leaders". UPDATE 06/05/13: As we mentioned in a recent interview with the ABC's Radio National, according to sources close to Kapp, he was paid upfront for the order - in cash.