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.

UN expert to Rodarte: Hands off Aboriginal culture

rodarte FW1213/getty via daylife

In writing about Rodarte’s Fall 2011 show in February last year and specifically, about the casting of Alice Springs-based model Melissa Johannsen, frockwriter noted, “When the Mulleavy sisters were dreaming up their Fall 2011 collection with the Great American Plains in mind, chances are there weren't any pictures of Australia’s Red Centre on their mood board”. Twelve months on, coincidentally, what inspired Laura and Kate Mulleavy, the designer siblings behind the New York-based label, for their Fall 2012 range? “Australia!” and “the rugged outback”, they told reporters backstage in New York last month, in spite of the fact that neither has ever visited Australia. The inspiration “came out of nowhere”, according to the Mulleavys. No, it did not, says Megan Davis, an indigenous Australian lawyer who is the head of the University of NSW Indigenous Law Centre and an expert member of the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues (UNPFII). UPDATED: The Mulleavys claim the prints were licensed, but they still won't reveal the identity of the artist/s (see below).