Talking the talk: Fashion Torque, Live in the Studio and Insight

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Have always been a big believer in fashion forums. In my brief incarnation as editor of Australian industry newsmagazine Ragtrader, I initiated a (very short-lived) series called “Breakfast with Ragtrader”, inviting various fashion players to have a yack about industry issues. In the many and varied fashion panels in which I have been invited to be involved in recent years (including FGI, New Zealand Fashion Week, the L’Oréal Melbourne Fashion Festival and a talk series hosted by the State Library of NSW during last year’s Rosemount Sydney Fashion Festival), I have always walked away thinking that if anyone were to initiate an ongoing in-the-round fashion series in this country, it would probably be a hit. Social media conversations are fine, but nothing beats a live event. Interesting to see more and more activity in this regard. Fashion Torque was initiated a couple of months ago by Melbourne stylist Philip Boon and designer Jenny Bannister with various guest panellists. It runs every Thursday at 6.30pm at the Globe Café in Prahran and is free to attend. 

The Gap is opening this month in Australia - it's just not sure where

American retail juggernaut The Gap is leading the fast fashion charge to Australia, opening its first store downunder this month. Spain's Zara is also en route, ditto Japan’s Uniqlo. But is the first Gap store due to open in Melbourne, as advertised - or Sydney? Looking at The Gap’s website (screen cap above - click to enlarge; tks to Guy Willis for the tip), you’d be forgiven for thinking the company hasn’t got a blinking clue which city is which. Behind the “Melbourne” sign on the left are three Sydney icons: the Opera House, Centrepoint Tower and what appears to be Aussie Stadium. Behind the "Sydney" sign on the right are three Melbourne icons: a green tram, the Arts Centre spire and what looks very much like the Docklands. To Gap’s credit it did get the correct Luna Park – that’s Melbourne's version on the left. And that appears to be a sliver of Melbourne's Flinders Street Station behind that. Unless, of course, it’s Sydney’s Queen Victoria Building. Could The Gap please sort itself out stat. We’re pretty laid back, us Aussies, but there is a minor difference of 1160kms between the two cities.

The fur is flying in Melbourne, but where the hell is PETA?

Within one hour of touching down in Melbourne for this week's Marc Jacobs on Film festival, fashblogger Bryanboy told me he was approached by two animal rights protestors on Bourke Street over a fox fur collar he was sporting. One of two fur collars he brought to Melbourne. In the interim, the animal rights lobby has been asleep at the vegan leather-covered wheel. In spite of having been targeted by PETA last year back in his home town of Manila, a recent blog blowup about the origin of these particular furs - China - and furthermore, having repeatedly advertised his Melbourne location, not a peep out of PETA. And that's not for a lack of opportunities.

On Tuesday, frockwriter was down in Melbourne to moderate another FGI Fashion Flash industry seminar, this time at the Fashion Exposed trade show.

Spent the rest of the afternoon out and about town with Bryanboy and a blog posse that included Matt 'Imelda' Jordan, Helen 'Sassybella' Lee, Hayley Hughes and celebrity stylist Philip Boon.

Bryanboy was wearing the silver fox and frockwriter couldn't resist doing a little impromptu styling:




In case there is any doubt that that is, or at least was, a fox, here's a closeup of its face:



I did not manage to get a shot, but FYI the mouth opens and closes.

After we both tweeted the shots, I was a little concerned that Bryanboy might be on the receiving end of a bucket of red paint. And that I might inadvertently cop a little PETA "fur scum" rage by way of proximity:


imelda

But nada.

And as if Bryanboy needed any encouragement on the fur front, moreover, Boon appears to be even more of a fur-ophile.

Here's a shot from Boon's iPhone that was recently taken during a trip to the Victorian Alps:



This afternoon, Boon took Bryanboy on a Melbourne shopping tour, which swung by numerous shops selling vintage fur.



bryanboy

And apparently Bryanboy did not walk away empty-handed. Here he is back at the hotel:


bryanboy

Shots and shop locations were tweeted by both Bryanboy and Boon all afternoon.

But still, no reaction.

So there you have it.

In spite of recent protests outside the boutique of Melbourne designer Alannah Hill (and an email death threat which PETA denied had anything to do with them), PETA has lost the battle against fur in Melbourne - where a fur coat would no doubt come in very handy during the chilly southern winter.

Too busy busy pumping energy into the mulesing saga downunder?

Risko business: Melbourne's mod bloggers face off against the h8ers

circa now

Did we say that a new genre of model blog is emerging... one in which models play dressups and pose for their own cameras? Yes, I believe we did - last night. Well already comes the news of two more model style blogs (tks Emma for the tip). Intriguingly, both are also Australian. And coincidentally, the model authors behind the blogs - SRC783 and Circa Now – are not only both 21, Melbourne-based and good mates, they share something else in common with outgoing Sydney mod Alexandra Spencer, whose 4th and Bleeker blog we profiled yesterday. At 5'7", both are very small in mainstream modelling terms. Kate Moss notwithstanding - and Moss is a rare exception to this rule - any 5'7" models would be shut out of runway contention and no doubt a lot of other work.

SRC783 is written by Christina Dietz (pictured left, above), aka "Risko", who is repped by Scene Models in Melbourne.

Circa Now is written by Tessa-Jay Slight (right) who is repped by, wait for it, Melbourne’s Giant Management.

Slight appears to be more of an introvert than Dietz, with her blog largely filled with fashion images depicting other models – or else cropped images of herself.

In addition to test shots, Dietz, on the other hand, has posted a plethora of what appear to be autoportraits in her own outfits, with some outfits/accessories apparently made by her.

And either her outfits, or her moxie, appear to have gotten up the noses of some of her readers, who left over 80 comments on one recent post called “night cats”, a large percentage of them unflattering.





src783

In the 'night cats' post, Dietz posed in a leopard-print top, skinny pants, laceup boots and a cowboy hat, with a cigarette in hand (above).

But it wasn’t the anti-smoking lobby that took issue with the image.

Here is a selection of hilariously snarky comments:

“your blog is so shit, it is just an excuse for you to take photos of yourself and could not be more unoriginal. so what you have an obsession with a top - great blogging. real inspirational”.

“poor girl she has a fat bum and is with the worst agency in melb, half of her modelling shots are by photographers who shes helped with theyre folios shes a gaybo she has a pretty face but risko disko will never be a real model”

“you try way too hard. stop trying to be alternative. You'll always be just an over-tanned, blonde private school girl with no substance”.

“i agree, i know this girl and she is a five foot tall wanna be model whose photos all consist of test shots”

“christina dietze is a loser ok she models for scene the gayest modelling agency in melbourne i know her and she is an absolute c*** and basically if you have a camera or know someone cool she will befriend you! her bottom is massive also”

The vitriol prompted buddy Slight to fire off a “Lay Off” post and warn the “cyber bullies” that Blogger has been alerted and that their “IP addresses will be traced”.

Unless there were some rather more serious threats etc that have yet to see the light of day, best of luck with that guys.

Props to Dietz for having the guts to clear the comments. Like so many other bloggers who face malicious personal attacks such as this, she could simply have buried them. The comments are ludicrously juvenile however, and hugely entertaining, and anyone reading them laughs not at Dietz, but the twits who made them.

Dietz would do well to take on board the fact that two very high profile international fashion bloggers, Rumi Neely from Fashion Toast (who is heading to next month's Air New Zealand Fashion Week) and Susie Lau aka Susie Bubble, continue to cop their share of similar comments - and run them. In interviews, Lau has even spoken about negative comments prompting her at one stage to consider giving up blogging.

It's hard to put one's finger on exactly what it is about these personal style blogs that prompts so much unprovoked vitriol from some readers.

It's almost as if ordinary women standing up and feeling confident about themselves and their own sense of style is just a little too much for some people.

Polly Borland @ Murray White

What do Bill Henson's teenage models do when they grow up? Some open their own art galleries showcasing exhibitions of images of breasts and va-jay-jays. A case in point, Murray White, the Melbourne hipster - and Christopher Walken-lookalike - behind the glamorous contemporary art gallery, Murray White Room.

White's latest show Polly Borland - Bunny opens tomorrow.

It's a new exhibition of images by the Melbourne-born, London-based photographer Polly Borland - and which runs concurrently to an exhibition on now at London's Michael Hoppen Contemporary gallery.

On Saturday Borland was the cover story of The Independent's weekend magazine:



Her work hangs in the National Portrait Gallery in London and has featured in publications ranging from The Independent to The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Face, Dazed and Confused and British Vogue. Borland has also shot album covers for Nick Cave and Goldfrapp.

Based in the UK since 1989, Borland's portraits have included Sir Kingsley Amis, Cate Blanchett and the Queen. But she is better-known for some of her more controversial work, which includes studies of the Russian sex industry after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Californian Cryonicists and the 'Baby' series - which looks at fetishists who like to dress up as babies.

'Bunny' is a series of images of 6'3" tall British actress Gwendoline Christie.

All up there are 52 images in the project - Hoppen is showing 30 in London and White, 26 - with six prints available globally of each.

The entire collection of images is showcased in an accompanying book published by Damien Hirst's imprint, Other Criteria, with words from British writer Will Self and Nick Cave. According to this blog, Hirst has purchased a print of every image in the exhibition.

Given his delicate sensibilities over the Henson affair however, I'm not sure that Kevin Rudd will be rushing out to buy many of the images.

Nor indeed is Rudd likely to be purchasing a copy of the companion book - in which this poem penned by Cave appears opposite an image (below) of, not to put too fine a point on it, a twat:

“The honeyed Bunny with pudding warm
Full of fingers up to her arm
And streaming in her darling pants a gout of goo
Went at it the way I imagine most girls do
As they picture big-balled fuck-poles
Hammering their holes
And...um....
They come”.

White opened his gallery two years ago. Previously he was assistant curator and registrar of collections at Melbourne's Heide Museum of Modern Art and manager at Melbourne's Australian Galleries.

Shows to date have featured local and international names such as Sangeeta Sandraseger, Alex Pittendrigh, Tony Clark, Judith Van Heeren, Eliza Hutchison, Sally Ross and Anne-Marie May.



According to White however, his shows have yet to generate a single critical review in the Australian daily arts media - who "only ever seem interested in talking about Sidney Nolan".

"They [the mainstream press] have dropped the ball on contemporary art" White told me today. "The publications have also dropped the ball on the visual arts. They’ve almost eliminated visual arts space – it's just so limited considering what [coverage] literature and the performing arts receive, they have pages and pages. The visual arts is absolutely marginalised at the moment, contemporary or otherwise".

Given Borland's pulling power - and the fact that The Sydney Morning Herald has now picked up not two, but three, stories initially done by this blog - perhaps White's luck is about to change.


Polly Borland - Bunny
18th July - 23rd August
Murray White Room
Sargood Lane (off Exhibition Street)
Melbourne
Images:
1/Untitled III 2004-05 Fujicolour crystal archive print © Polly Borland
2/Untitled XI 2004-05 Fujicolour crystal archive print © Polly Borland
3/Untitled V 2004-05 Fujicolour crystal archive print © Polly Borland
Courtesy the artist and Murray White Room

Sydney emerges as world's 7th Top Fashion City - no thanks to Chamber of Commerce

Jayson Brunsdon's models, Sydney Overseas Passenger Terminal, Australian Fashion Week. May 2nd 2008/Getty


Yes well, one week after the good, and clearly terribly fashion-savvy, folk at the Sydney Chamber of Commerce declined an interview with a leading international fashion business publication on the grounds that fashion is "not relevant" - the Global Language Monitor has just ranked Sydney as the world's seventh Top Fashion City. After New York, Rome, Paris, Milan, London and Los Angeles. Not only that, Sydney is ranked as the number 1 fashion city in Asia. Who knew?

And what the hell is the Global Language Monitor?

A five year-old, Austin, Texas-based not-for-profit that's operated by a bunch of cunning linguists.

They track the frequency of words, phrases and names across all sections of the media, including the blogosphere - and then rank them using a proprietary algorithm doo-dad called the GLM Predictive Quantities Index.

The organisation has been analysing world city names and terms related to the word "fashion" since 2004 - however only published its findings for the first time last year.

In 2004, at least by GLM's calculations, New York outranked the city which most people usually consider to be the world fashion capital - Paris - and New York has kept its number one ranking ever since.

A city's fashion ranking can be very much a reflection, GLM conceded this year, of marketing and literally "getting the word out there".

With an aggressive global marketer such as IMG now at the helm of at least the Bryant Park component of New York Fashion Week - not to mention both LA and Australian Fashion Weeks, the latter whose biggest showcase takes place in Sydney - it's not hard to fathom why those cities should fare so well in terms of media mentions.

Even so, Sydney would appear to be punching well above its weight.

Below is GLMs Top 30 list for 2008, with each city's 2007 rank where applicable. Separate to this I was also given other figures.

Sydney and Dubai are the biggest surprises: the first surging forward by five spots from 2007; and the second, by twelve.

Melbourne fell three spots to 18 which may well piss off Melburnians.

A number of cities are new to the 2008 list. Not seen here are Sao Paolo (which fell 12 spots to 33rd) and Bangkok (-17 to 34th).

1. New York (1)
2. Rome (2)
3. Paris (3)
4. Milan (5)
5. London (4)
6. Los Angeles (6)
7. Sydney (12)
8. Las Vegas (9)
9. Berlin (11)
10. Tokyo (6)
11. Hong Kong (8)
12. Dubai (24)
13. Shanghai (14)
14. Singapore (10)
15. Madrid (New)
16. Moscow (16)
17. Santiago (19)
18. Melbourne (15)
19. Stockholm (New)
20. Buenos Aires (22)
21. Johannesburg (23)
22. Mumbai (18)
23. Cape Town (New)
24. New Delhi (New)
25. Barcelona (13)
26. Miami (New)
27. Krakow (25)
28. Prague (New)
29. Toronto (New)
30. Rio de Janeiro (20)