The snow must go on - New York Fashion Week Fall/Winter 2013/2014

catherine mcneil walks jason wu FW1314 via style.com

"Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers" goes the creed of the United States Postal Service. With 4700 flights cancelled in anticipation of Winter Storm Nemo - a blizzard of potentially historic proportions that is currently bearing down on the northeastern US - that remains to be seen. Although Marc Jacobs has had to postpone his show until next Thursday, New York Fashion Week rolls on regardless. Among those turning up for duty is a swag of Aussie models. So far we've counted eight nine ten eleven twelve thirteen fourteen fifteen, but there are no doubt more to come, including new faces Gabby Dover and Jordan Cohayney. Of note, Catherine McNeil, who is looking better than ever and was third out at the high profile Jason Wu show on day two yesterday, also closing Kenneth Cole. Here are her catwalk compatriots thus far.

Australian models on the S/S 2013 campaign trail

Their numbers on the Spring/Summer 2013 runways might have dropped by half from the previous summer season, but 19 Australian models still managed to cut a swathe through the New York, London, Milan and Paris shows in September and October last year. Some among them, such as Ruby Jean Wilson and Julia Nobis, scored high profile opening and closing roles. Judging by the SS13 advertising campaigns that are now beginning to roll out, the antipodians made quite an impression. To date, no less than seven Australian models have popped up in ten major international campaigns. Who are they?

Five minutes with Ruby Jean Wilson

Born in Scotland and raised in the UK, Ruby Jean Wilson emigrated to Australia with her family at age 13 and started modelling three years later. In a very short space of time she has certainly made her mark. One of Australia's most high profile catwalkers on the international show circuit over the past couple of seasons, at the Spring/Summer 2013 shows in September and October she opened and closed Marc Jacobs and then opened Louis Vuitton, subsequently scoring ad campaigns for both brands. The campaigns were lensed by Juergen Teller and Steven Meisel, respectively, and she is the sole star of the Marc Jacobs campaign. Back home briefly from her new, New York base for a summer holiday, frockwriter caught up Wilson just before Christmas at the Australian Fashion Foundation party to announce the winners of the foundation's 2013 burrs. Among the topics canvassed with RJW: which other family members might follow in her fashionable footsteps? And whose name does she have tattooed on her left wrist? 

A Merry Marc, Anna, Carine, Tom and Tavi Christmas

Twas the night before Christmas and all through the fashion house, not a creature was stirring….. Wait, that can't be right. Carine’s out of a job. It could be Tom’s fault. Anna is so worried about hers, she’s been reduced to Christmas shopping in Brooklyn flea markets. Marc’s pissed because some rat bastard leaked his Marc by Marc Jacobs Spring/Summer 2011 campaign casting deets. And Tavi still wants to know why he gave her third row at the main line show in September. Like everyone else we imagine, frockwriter has received and seen more than our fair share of animated JibJab Elf Yourself Christmas e-cards over the past couple of years. This season the JibJabbing seems to be in overdrive, so we thought we might as well add to it. Here with a Christmas medley, we give you fashion's latest superband, Botox: Marc on vocals, Anna on drums, with Carine, Tom and Tavi on rhythm, lead and bass guitars. One can only imagine what their hotel room looked like after the gig. Merry Christmas and happy holidays guys. Thanks for your company this year. It's been an honour dishing it up for you. Rock out with your frock out in 2011.  

Andrej Pejic nabs Marc by Marc Jacobs to boot

armin morbach for tush via fashion gone rogue

 
Ah the Andrej Pejic story. There's just no end to the updates. So after mesmerising the Paris Spring/Summer 2011 mens runways in June, booking editorials with, among others, Vogue Paris and Vogue Italia, not to mention Jean Paul Gaultier's Spring/Summer 2011 ad campaign, WWD reported an hour ago in Monday's Fashion Scoops column (here) that Pejic has just shot the Marc by Marc Jacobs SS11 campaign (confirming previous reports on frockwriter that he had booked a second campaign). Last week Pejic debuted at No 40 on models.com's Top 50 Male Models. Notes MDC: "Andrej, in a few short months has become the face of a new sort of male beauty, the kind that sparks comments, controversies and intense scrutiny... look for Andrej's stock to rise even higher in 2011". You can count on it.

Louis Vuitton's glitch in the Matrix

There is no spoon, OK? As consolation, in approximately half an hour (ETA 14.30 CEST, 23.30 AEST), the Louis Vuitton Spring/Summer 2011 womenswear show will take place in Paris. Head to Louis Vuitton's Facebook page to watch the live stream and Now Fashion for still photos in (almost) real-time. And as if runway models didn't have enough backstage photographers to contend with the nanosecond they exit the runway, they are due to be assaulted by 52 cameras in-the-round backstage, via which every outfit will be clocked in 360. Check back in back at LV Facebook central at 20.00 CEST (05.00 AEST) to see the fruits of those Matrix-style photo sessions (in the interim, you can practice rotating Jacobs with your cursor via LV's handy little player, above). After this, there is no turning back. You take the blue pill - the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill - you stay in Wonderland and Marc Jacobs shows you how deep the rabbit-hole goes.

Living in the Seventies - Marc Jacobs Spring/Summer 2011

all images: getty via daylfe

Bianca Jagger, Jerry Hall and Marie Helvin didn’t ride out on white horses from behind the circular Richard Serra-lookalike set (most likely signed by Marc Jacobs’ go-to stage designer Stefan Beckman), but with their frizzed-out Sarah Moon hair and bleached-out Aladdin Sane eyebrows, Jacobs’ Spring/Summer 2011 models sure looked like Studio 54 refugees. When decked out in gold lamé or Brady Bunch stripe knit hotpants, skinny rib sweaters, bandeau “boob tubes” and floppy sun hats, with more than a little Iris from Taxi Driver thrown in for good measure – the child prostitute played by Jodie Foster in Martin Scorsese’s 1976 film. Another key reference for this collection appears to have been Yves Saint Laurent’s influential Ballets Russes collection, also, coincidentally, from 1976. There were voluminous off-the-shoulder peasant dresses and tops, often in the signature YSL colours of violet and red, with oversized safari jackets over maxi skirts echoing an earlier YSL collection. With flowers in their hair and at least one palm tree emblazoned on a top, this collection felt a little more Resort than Spring/Summer. But this has been a very safe season in New York so far, with the GFC still impacting on US retail, as it continues to bite elsewhere. There were some beautiful, commercial, chevron-striped chiffon dresses and sweet crochet swimwear, but it's the hugely-flattering, high-waisted bellbottom trousers which may well Fly Robin Fly out the door.

Christina Carey nabs Marc Jacobs

marc jacobs fw1011/style.com

Word just in from backstage at Marc Jacobs (via Sonny Vandevelde) is that Priscilla's Christina Carey is the only Australian model booked for the show (confirmed). The Marc Jacobs show, which is due to kick off at 12.00pm AEST (8.00pm EST), is one of the most prestigious modelling gigs at New York Fashion Week - if not the most prestigious. You can watch the show live stream on marcjacobs.com. Great get for Carey.

The making of Louis Vuitton's Spring/Summer 2010 campaign

And unless I'm mistaken, a quick check of Tokyo Dandy's blog shows that they were among the very first to track down this YouTube of the making of Louis Vuitton's new S/S 2010 campaign starring Lara Stone. So here's this as well.

Charlotte Dawson was a Marc Jacobs muse?

Well, for fifteen minutes at least. Here is a series of screen caps from an episode of Andy Warhol's 1980s MTV series Fifteen Minutes, filmed in January 1987 and which features the former Ford New York model, now Australia's Next Top Model judge, modelling one of Jacobs' earliest collections. The underwear-as-outwear-themed collection includes the Freudian Slip Dress, emblazoned with a Sigmund Freud caricature. Dawson was one of three models cast for the show. Twenty three year-old Jacobs conducts the interview astride a ladder. And if you find the photo shoot antics of the ANTM contestants amusing, Dawson and co are required to climb the ladder after him. It's one of three episodes of the MTV series that will be screened by the Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI) next week under the umbrella title Marc Jacobs' New York, as part of ACMI's week-long Marc Jacobs on Film festival during Melbourne Spring Fashion Week.

Yes, that's right, an entire week of films - six in total - dedicated to Jacobs' work.

Frockwriter buddy Bryanboy, in whose honour the ostrich skin 'BB' bag from Jacobs' FW0809 collection was named, has been flown down by ACMI to open the festival on Saturday night.

Click here for the full schedule and ticket details.
















all images: screen caps from 'marc jacobs' new york', courtesy ACMI

Members only: Purple people eater Olivier Zahm

olivier zahm self portrait/purple diary

When frockwriter recently asked is Olivier Zahm the new Michael Hutchence?, we did say that we looked forward to his future postings. And fashion’s favourite perv has not disappointed. In fact the more breasts, asses, twats and phalluses that Zahm posts in his three month-old personal photo blog Purple Diary, it is evident that the PURPLE FASHION magazine co-founder and editor is rapidly emerging as The Cobrasnake of the fashion elite. Make that the X-rated version. Warning: NSFW

While Mark ‘The Cobrasnake’ Hunter shoots trashed punters, and trashed wannabe big time models, Zahm appears to have intimate access to the downtime of some of fashion’s biggest names, from Kate Moss to Mischa Barton, Lou Doillon, Marc Jacobs, Karl Lagerfeld and Stefano Pilati.

And the vignettes of their private lives that are being documented by Zahm would probably make some of these players' respective PR departments wince.

These include toilet trysts between Mischa Barton and Lou Doillon, a far more explicit dancefloor dalliance between French scenesters Juliette Dol and Lauren Bastide, sundry gratuitous shots of womens' bottoms and breasts, artist Terence Koh simulating fellatio, evidence of Marc Jacobs’ saucy taste in art and a full frontal shot of Zahm himself, who is apparently never separated from his trademark aviators – even whilst immersed in a Russian bath.


John Currin artwork @ Marc Jacobs' Paris apartment, April 19/purple diary

All of these lewd shots interspersed, strangely enough, in between a plethora of happy snaps of an innocent young child, Asia Zahm, who one assumes could be Zahm’s daughter.

Really looking forward to exclusive previews of Lagerfeld's neatly-arranged arsenal of sex toys and Princess Caroline's nipple ring.




natacha ramsay, paris, april 14/purple diary

The trompe l'oeil necklace trend - it never ends!

lutefisk


On Sunday, sparked by Karen Walker’s reedition of the broken string of pearls print from her own archive for her FW0910 show, frockwriter showed a trompe l'oeil necklace trend chronology, showing which big fashion names picked up the look after Walker first showed it for Resort 2000. Well apparently Givenchy has also hopped on board. Because here is Bryanboy, just snapped outside - and also backstage - at Marc by Marc Jacobs in a Givenchy T-shirt – part of what he reports was a limited edition run done for the luxury e-tailer Luisa Via Roma and based on the heavy multi-chain necklaces from Givenchy’s FW0809 show. Click here to see the Marc by Marc Jacobs collection on wwd.com - the show featured two Australian models, newcomer Bridget Malcolm (look #21, contrary to reports, Malcolm did not walk in Monday's Marc Jacobs main line show) and Myf Shepherd (#40). How’s Bryanboy doing in New York BTW?

As revealed by WWD, Bryanboy is in New York filming a 25-minute documentary on Marc Jacobs' FW0910 season for the Japanese market.

Commissioned by Marc Jacobs Japan (with Stephen Schible, co-producer of Lost In Translation producing), Bryanboy has been filming at both the Marc Jacobs and Marc by Marc Jacobs shows.

Head to Bryanboy's blog to see two of the fashion world’s best-known figures, Paris Vogue editor Carine Roitfeld and US Vogue's Hamish Bowles, in uncharacteristically goofy happy snaps with BB.

Then there is Marc Jacobs himself, who named a handbag from his FW0809 collection after Bryanboy following a series of video/photo/email exchanges.

Here's Sonny Vandevelde's backstage shot of the pair shortly after they finally met in person backstage on Monday night:


bryanboy

Bryanboy told frockwriter:

“The only word to describe my experience here – it’s been magical. I’ve met so many people. And I’m really enjoying my time. It’s just a blogger’s dream come true. I saw Myf. I met Jeanne Beker [host of Canada's Fashion Television], I met Carine again and Anna Della Russo [Vogue Nippon]. But I was so scared to meet Anna Wintour. I was too scared to go up to her. She has this invisible force field around her. I wouldn’t dare”.

Punk'd: Marc Jacobs Blitzes NYFW with a neon-bright, 9-minute show

reuters/daylife.com


Well you heard it right the first time. Marc Jacobs started his show one minute early – and finished at 8.08pm. By frockwriter’s calculations, that’s a 9 minute show. Until the first runway shots start rolling in, the word from the trenches is that the show had an '80s vibe, with B52-style mega beehives and fauxhawks, neon sculpted dresses and jackets with huge shoulder pads. Also ponchos and hooded jackets. Backstage Jacobs told reporters the collection was "all about clubbing in the 80's, when New Yorkers could have fun, be creative. Not like now..."

Click here to see the full collection on wwd.com.


ap/daylife.com


getty/daylife.com


getty/daylife.com


marc jacobs FW0910 backstage/wwd

Prêt-à-Twitter: Backstage @ Marc Jacobs

Sydney expat Horacio Silva, features director/online director of T: The New York Times Style Magazine. Backstage at Marc Jacobs, which is due to commence in 10 minutes. Frockwriter hears Kamila is opening and that Myf Shepherd and Stephanie Carta may both be in the show. UPDATE: Unless there's something awry with Twitter's timeline, according to @womensweardaily, the show kicked off before the due start time of 8.00pm. And according to @booth1 (the LA Times' Booth Moore), the show was over at 8.08pm. Not a first - Ksubi once did a two minute show.

@themoment:

"Look for towering upswept punk Princess Anne 'dos (especially on Kamila). HS #nyfw
about 1 hour ago from web

"Guido Palau says the inspiration for the hair was the DIY approach of the club kids they used to hang out with and admired. HS #nyfw
about 1 hour ago from web

"At Marc Jacobs, look for amazing oversize sunglasses that bring to mind viewfinders. HS #nyfw
about 1 hour ago from web"

And from Wayne Sterling aka The Imagist:

"The Hiss Squad is atwitter...

Rumors of a new face opening...and a minimal flat runway setting. As well as a flashback to his "80's neon secretary" collection of the mid 90's"

Prêt-à-Twitter

Bryancam

bryanboy

Guys, our buddy Bryanboy is winging his way to New York Fashion Week as I type on the next leg of the "surreal" Marc Jacobs journey on which he's found himself over the past 12 months. Above is a self-portrait taken at Manila airport in the wee hours of Sunday morning. WWD got the scoop on precisely what he's going to be doing in the Big Apple. Check the story out here.

The Year of Living Bryanously

style magazine via bryanboy

If you build it... they will cast? That could turn out to be the motto of Filipino net sensation (and frockwriter buddy) Bryanboy, as he caps what in his own words has been a “surreal” 2008. Last week he made WWD’s 'Year In Fashion' supplement, as one of the ‘fashion moments’ of 2008. Overnight, he's been dubbed one of the Top 25 Faces of 2008 by high-profile model industry blog Confessions of a Casting Director, alongside some of the hottest new model names, including Australia's Abbey Lee Kershaw. Oh and Carla Bruni.

Bryanboy has been blogging for four years and was already on the media ascendant prior to 2008, not to mention the radar of the luxury industry – after model poses in a series of Fendi ads in 2006 bore a striking resemblance to his trademark Infamous Bryanboy Pose.

However his star rose in 2008 thanks to Marc Jacobs.

Bryanboy created an amusing video homage to Jacobs, following a spate of late 2007 media attacks on the designer over the tardiness of his fashion shows.

In appreciation, Jacobs thanked Bryanboy via email – and then in February this year, was photographed backstage at one of his Fall/Winter 08/09 shows in New York holding up an “I love Bryanboy” poster.

Then an email from Jacobs to Bryanboy, promising to call an ostrich skin handbag from the main collection after the blogger, was leaked via a Bryanboy friend and found itself all over the net.

After months of speculation, Jacobs made good on the promise, sending Bryanboy the actual handbag prototype from the show.

Confirmation that Jacobs had named the bag after Bryanboy resulted in a veritable avalanche of publicity.

Bryanboy made his first international Fashion Week foray at Australian Fashion Week - contrary to reports at the time, flying himself down (although, along with other international VIPs, he was put up at The Westin by organisers).

And while some of the event’s other international VIPs, notably reps from The Financial Times and Nylon, have complained about being accorded bad seats at AFW shows, Bryanboy found himself front row at almost every show.

Next off the bat was Hong Kong Luxury Week, followed by New Zealand and KL Fashion Weeks, all apparently attended as an invited media guest.


style magazine via bryanboy

Of the plethora of interviews done by Bryanboy in the wake of the Marc Jacobs story, the December 2008 edition of Singaporean fashion magazine Style represented a turning point.

Not only was Bryanboy interviewed for the magazine, but also styled and photographed, as a model would be, for a series of accompanying images – whilst wearing a mélange of mens' and womens' clothes.

It must have killed him to take off his trademark sunglasses – he usually never likes being photographed without them.

What emerged - to those who don't know him - was a beautiful face.

Put it down to the emerging power of the blogosphere, the Asian fashion explosion – not forgetting fashion’s androgynous moment - Bryanboy.com is a scathingly brilliant idea whose time has come.

Was the Marc Jacobs bag story a fortuitous happenstance, motivated by nothing more than genuine mutual admiration?

Or was Bryanboy the unwitting star of a very clever viral marketing campaign?

Either way, he is the only person on COACD’s list who is not a professional model.

Let’s see what 2009 brings...

Marc Jacobs gives good massage - Karlie Kloss cites throwing up as a SS09 highlight

backstage LV SS08/frockwriter

On models.com’s just-posted “Model memorable moments SS/09”, Russian supermod Anna Gushina reveals that Marc Jacobs provided a 3 Minute Angel-type service for his models at fittings for the Louis Vuitton show earlier this month in Paris.

Gushina tells models.com:

“One of my most memorable moments was in Paris this year during the Louis Vuitton fitting. There were a couple of masseuses there to give quick shoulder rubs and provide a few minutes of complete relaxation! After three weeks of travel, fittings, casting and shows, a quick massage gave me a jolt of energy to finish up the shows!”

With three separate models talking about the payment-in-trade issue recently - and let's be fair to Jacobs here, the practice would appear to be fairly endemic across the fashion industry - nice to hear that Jacobs thought of pampering his LV girls. Most of whom would have been pretty whacked by that stage.

The Vuitton show is one of the very last shows of the season. At the end of the show, as the models walk backstage off the runway, you can usually hear a resounding cheer from those girls who are finishing up then and there.

Models.com's other model SS09 highlights include:

• A highway motorcycle race between east Euro moneygirls Kasia Struss, Vlada Roslyakova, Natasha Poly and Georgina Stojiljkovic, to get to the Galliano show on time (Stojiljkovic)
• Another mad get-to-show panic which induced a booker’s asthma attack (Ali Stephens)
• A bout of food poisoning following a dodgy Milanese risotto (Karlie Kloss)

The cynics would probably have a field day speculating why Kloss nominated a vomiting episode as a season highlight. To the anecdote, frockwriter notes, Kloss did in fact add:

"Give me a burger and fries any day!"

Frockwriter’s memory has nevertheless just been jogged on a couple of other gut-wrenching fashion episodes.

As we noted, in an earlier blog incarnation, at the FW0708 shows, upon coming down with what at the time we assumed may have been a gastric flu:

“An antiemitic should be de rigueur in the handbag of anyone contemplating covering a fashion season. But not solely due to the fact that an inevitable percentage of the clothes that they will see are bound to make them feel sick.”

Beyond the flu and adverse Stilnox reactions (we are still not 100% sure about the exact cause of the latter) frockwriter has only experienced food poisoning twice. From the same restaurant in Paris. Coincidentally, it was an Italian restaurant (which has since closed).

Burberry’s PR Erika Johnston told me that she was struck down with food poisoning after enjoying room service at one of the company’s Milanese hotels one particular season. Burberry has since changed hotels.

In between showings of her Sabatini collection at the Tranoi trade show in Paris, Margie Milich was once obliged to run to the bathroom following an entree of escargots at Le Grand Cafe.

And according to frockwriter’s usually tremendously reliable backstage sources, minutes prior to the commencement of Sonia Rykiel’s 40th anniversary show in Paris earlier this month, one dresser projectile vomited over three models.

Some time was reportedly spent fishing particles out of the models' hair and clothes.

Marc's Fair Ladies

wall street journal

Part prairie, part Pygmalion, Marc Jacobs mixed it up for SS09.

Starting almost on-the-dot for the second season in a row, and set to George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue soundtrack, the show’s backdrop was a mirrored runway with a difference – one made from dozens of dress mirrors stationed down the catwalk’s length.

The effect was not only reminiscent of a circus mirror, but of the famous faceted mirror staircase at Chanel’s headquarters in the Rue Cambon. There was also something more than a little Coco Chanel (and YSL) about the models' sweet straw boaters.

The collection, a mashup of mannish plaid and ladylike luxe, groaned with voluminous layered silhouettes, nearly every last look cinched at the waist with the collection’s signature, wide obi-like sash or cummerbund.

They included gypsy-like, tiered skirts fashioned from up to three different fabrications and styled back with boxy little 80s-look jackets with shoulder pads and elbow patches. Also, button-down plaid shirts, which seemed at once a nod to Jacobs’ 1992 grunge collection for Perry Ellis – which got him fired – and the moment’s lingering lumberjack look.

But Jacobs is the one to set trends, not follow them. Some of his sure-to-be-copied SS09 looks include two voluminous colourblocked sundresses in canary yellow, turquoise and violet which looked like they had been fashioned from two obscure countries' national flags.

There were ruffled pinafore dresses with plastic bretelles; crisp shirts with bracelet-length sleeves worn over high-waisted, mid calf pencil skirts in Jacobs’ now trademark liquid metallic fabrics; high-shine, slimline brocade cocktail shorts; and smart print coats and side-split, cheongsam-style skirts, both with contrast piping.

The tangential closer: three, simple, full-length draped jersey dresses in apricot and dove grey.

The latter did seem to strike an odd note. But then, perhaps you had to be there. The swag of boldface names who were included Jennifer Lopez, Nicole Richie, Winona Ryder and Victoria Beckham, who sported a new gamine cropped 'do.

Accessories included a spectacular platform espadrille with straps laced all the way to the knee.

Click here to see the full collection on style.com.

An Oz model trifecta at Marc Jacobs - and one of them is pushing 40

storm models

It’s mind-boggling trying to keep up with the Australian models in New York. Just when you think you have a handle on who is breaking into the international scene, comes news of a totally unsung new heroine – or indeed a veteran who, having long since hung up her stilettos, has just decided to return to the main game in her mid-late 30s. Arguably the biggest Australian modelling story to date of New York Fashion Week is that the Marc Jacobs show, which wrapped a short time ago, featured not one but three Australian models: Myf Shepherd, Alice Burdeu and 90s superwaif Emma Balfour.



balfour at marc jacobs, sep 8/style.com

The mother of two has just decided to resume modelling. According to her Australian agent Priscilla Leighton-Clarke, who spoke to Balfour backstage at Jacobs, she is attempting to reboot her career this week with the Jacobs and Alexander Wang shows.


balfour at alexander wang, sep 6/style.com

Stand by to see whether any other iconic 90s models also pop up in Jacobs’ show - which started at 9.15pm, according to our backstage sources, just 15 minutes after the scheduled start time.

As set by Jacobs at the Louis Vuitton SS08 show in Paris last October, the return to older, iconic models is certainly a fashion trend with legs, with several big name 80s/90s models such as Naomi Campbell, Linda Evangelista and Christy Turlington enjoying a raft of recent high profile advertising campaigns, including YSL and Prada.

And not before time many would argue - even the agents themselves.

“Modelling does really need to go across the ages a bit” Leighton-Clarke told me. “It’s all very well having these young girls, that’s great, that’s where new models starts. But I think with the likes of Emma Balfour, Kate Moss, Linda Evangelista, Naomi... It’s absolutely terrific that these girls are still working because women can relate to them".

She added, "We had such an incredible reaction from Elite in New York [when they mentioned Balfour wanted to work again]. We encouraged her, it wasn’t something that was foremost on her mind. But she’s delighted that she has landed in New York a week ago and all this is happening for her now”.