As reported by frockwriter on October 1st, the second Stella McCartney for Target Australia collection was due to launch in 102 stores on October 29th. Last Thursday, Target told Ragtrader that 20percent of the stock had sold out on its first day and that the company was “extremely pleased” with the reaction. Five stores were singled out for special mention, where the 42-unit range had reportedly performed the best. Adelaide's Target Rundle Street, slap bang in that city's busiest shopping precinct, clearly was not one of them however. Because when frockwriter was in town last week for the Adelaide Fashion Festival and checked the store on November 9th, it looked to have almost the entire collection still hanging - and noone looking at it. Five days later, at Westfield Bondi Junction in Sydney – one of the stores flagged by Target as having experienced the highest demand – we couldn’t help but notice this 20percent off banner, top, in the middle of McCartney’s section. And this is what the Stella McCartney section looks like today in Target Rundle Street (below) - after the entire McCartney promotion was moved away from the front of the store to join the rest of the womenswear offer, reports our SA fashionista-on-the-ground, Selena Battersby.
It's a busy week next week. On Sunday frockwriter will be down in Melbourne for the opening of the L'Oreal Melbourne Fashion Festival. On Wednesday 17th, we will have the honour of moderating the Sydney presentation by Refinery 29 co-founders, the New York-based Philippe Von Borries and Piera Gelardi. Staged at the Museum of Sydney and organised by Melbourne digital outfit Portable, it’s one of three Australian talks the duo will deliver over the next seven days, providing an insight into what went into building one of the web’s hottest indie fashion sites. Tonight they will be in Brisbane and on the 18th, Melbourne. Then on Friday 19th frockwriter will be back down in Melbourne, where we will also have the honour of opening the first Australian exhibition of our buddy, Belgralian backstage snapper Sonny Vandevelde at Mars Gallery.
The exhibition's soft opening is this Saturday and it runs until March 28th, so check it out if you are in town.
Sonny already knows he is the focus of an upcoming feature in the Melbourne broadsheet The Age, penned by fashion editor Jan Breen Burns - which will in fact be the first mainstream Australian media profile of his work.
What he doesn’t yet know is that he is in fact tomorrw's cover story of the paper's A2 arts supplement. Above is a sneak peek at the A2 cover which features one of his shots. Buy the paper to read how this Sydney surfie became one of the best backstage photographers in the world. We'll update with a link once the story goes online (and voilà).
Sydney’s Daily Telegraph newspaper has added some interesting details to the intrigue surrounding the suicide of top British designer Alexander McQueen, the biggest fashion story since the murder of Gianni Versace in 1998. Citing an interview with McQueen conducted by Irish journalist Godfrey Deeny for the April edition of Australian Harpers Bazaar, the paper claims that McQueen had been recently (although it doesn't clarify how recently) jilted by an Australian lover, whose name he had tattoed on his arm. It also includes claims from an unnamed friend of the designer - as originally reported in The Daily Mail - that McQueen’s arms were covered with lacerations following previous suicide attempts and that, against the backdrop of his mother’s death and funeral, which was due to take place yesterday, he could not cope with the pressures of completing his next collection. One friend is quoted as saying, “His Paris show is coming up and his staff have been nagging him all week to get up and start working. But he wouldn't get out of bed, he just couldn't get up. He hasn't even been to any of his fittings for the show. He was so upset about his mother. It was her funeral and he couldn't face it." Hasn't Gucci Group heard of bereavement leave?
What with the shocking news of Alexander McQueen's suicide falling on the first day of the Fall/Winter 2010/2011 show season in New York, it's a little hard to navigate around fashion news at the moment. Easy to miss in the deluge: A Supermodel Betrayed, a massive feature on Gemma Ward that has just gone up on The New York Post. Twoof my earlier stories (at The Sydney Morning Herald and news.com.au) are referenced in it. It contains quite a few revelations, most of them from anonymous sources, which is pretty typical of the fashion business. I mean, let's not let the truth get in the way of commercial interests. Of particular note:
An IMG insider:
"Her moment's over. She's not coming back."
The reaction of one fashion editor after spotting Ward in Chanel's Spring/Summer 2008 show, in the bikini:
"I saw her on the [Chanel] runway… I almost didn't recognize her... [she looked] big, almost bloated."
Olga Liriano, a New York City casting director and model booker, who does go on the record:
"We have a collective body dysmorphia, where we don't even know what normal is anymore, where a size 6 or 8 is overweight for a model.....there was no compassion [for Ward]".
In November 2009 IMG reportedly turned down a photo-shoot offer for Ward from Harper's Bazaar US:
"stipulating that if she were to return to its pages, it would be on the condition that she be back in modeling shape".
According to one highranking fashion mag source:
"Once these pictures are out of her being big, her brand is diminished, at least as far as her agency and the mainstream fashion world goes. Gemma's torn. In the last few years [her weight gain] was very much her f--k you to the industry. She's rebelling by putting on 30 or 40 pounds, so now going back isn't a straightforward option."
Fascinating. We have yet to check this with Harpers Bazaar - who probably also won't talk due to commercial interests - but if correct, it means that a major magazine wanted to book Ward but IMG refused unless she lost weight. Because she suddenly represents an embarrassing plus size model?
If clients are trying to book Ward, how does that equate to her moment being "over"? And if there is no interest in her, why has a mass market newspaper just published a major story on her?
Sources tell this blog that elsewhere in IMG, other parties have talked of Ward definitely making a comeback.
Frockwriter's take on this is that the industry should be extremely nervous.
Ward is sitting on a goldmine of information about the machinations at its top levels.
She's also a Scorpio. And they're known for the stings in their tails.
I mention press pickups here and there on Twitter. And if you scroll to the end of any Blogger blog post, after the comments, you can generally see which blogs have picked up stories (although this feature is not 100% reliable). But I thought I'd start corralling media pickups of frockwriter's stories (and interviews). I'm not going to plaster the blog's white space with them, just include a new "press" button on the RHS, for anyone who is remotely interested, linking back to this page. At time of writing [but since updated], apart from a new Canadian news link to a June, 2009 post about Christopher Kane, top of the list is the deluge of coverage of the Abbey Lee Kershaw/Alexander McQueen shoe post from two weeks ago. This story went all over the world. Including, hilariously, one tv news bulletin in Italy - something I only spotted by fluke after trawling Google News and finding this Sky News player, above, embedded in one Italian newspaper mention.
This doesn't count a plethora of other outlets, blogs and forums that picked the story up, kicking off with Fashionologie and Modelinia. Refinery29, Jezebel and Sydney's Daily Telegraph, among others, took it from there.
On the eve of the launch of the Australians in New York Fashion Foundation, a chat with Colin Bertram - pictured above at CNN, following an interview with Anderson Cooper. And looking remarkably comfortable in Cooper's anchor's chair.
Describe your current position and what the job involves. Colin Bertram: Features Editor/Assistant Managing Editor of the NY Daily News. I’m responsible for all fashion, entertainment, lifestyle, gossip and news features across the paper.
How difficult was it to break into the New York media environment? Briefly describe the career trajectory which led you to your current position. I worked retail for Giorgio Armani both in London and then in Sydney when Club 21 brought the Armani brand to Australia. When I transitioned to freelance fashion writing I was lucky to have Marion Hume as my first editor (she was at The Australian at the time) and learned very quickly under her eye. After spending a year in New York (2000) I returned to Sydney where Kirsty Cameron (then editor in chief of In Style Australia) offered me the position of fashion news editor at the magazine. I won my green card in the lottery and moved to New York in 2004 where my first job was as an associate editor on a Sunday insert celebrity magazine for the NY Daily News – I heard about the job through a friend – and then moved into the features department a year later and then worked my way up to my current position.
What do you know now that you dearly wish someone had told you when you first arrived in New York? Don’t let the rats (both animal and human) get to you!
Best part about working and living in New York. For work, I love the pace. For living, it was where I met the love of my life so you can’t really beat that!
Worst part about working and living in New York. As anywhere, working in NY has good and bad aspects and like the city itself, both are a little larger than life. The good can be truly amazing and the bad, well, it can really freak you out. Best part of living in NY is being able to get out and put it all in perspective so that when you return you see the city for the truly amazing place it is. It’s all about not getting bogged down in the day to day struggle of surviving in such a crazy place.
Where are you from in Australia and what do you most miss about it? Grew up in Brisbane and lived in Sydney prior to moving here. I miss family and friends. And Cherry Ripes…
Overnight Versace showed its SS10 menswear show in Milan. Inspired by the French Foreign Legion, the hallmark looks of the largely desert-toned collection were the safari suit, a series of loose djellabah shirts, many of them dip-dyed, and the now de rigueur manbag. In Versace’s case, this included both the megatote and the duffle bag, right down to small, square leather purses, worn belted at the hip. Below is a video of the collection from, once again, the good folk over at LA Times blogs. And just as well that someone had their eye on the social media ball at Versace, because in spite of the suggestion that Versace was “fully embracing the digital era”, including the promise of "doggie cam" - that's right, a camera-enabled pooch - Versace’s so-called exclusive live-streamed backstage access turned out to be rather confusing.
Who is that exactly? Ordway is a photographer who says he does a lot of work for Versace.
A few images of the hair & makeup stage were posted on Twitter prior to the show. The bulk of the images were however posted long after the show had wrapped - with no captions whatsoever.
Ordway also shot three maximum 30 second backstage videos backstage which also went up after the event (see below).
Another site called Ftape, which calls itself the "Ultimate Online Fashion Resource" - and whose connection to Versace is unclear – appeared charged with the role of promoting Ordway's coverage via its website and Twitter.
And at least Ftape has done a good job of aggregating all of Ordway's photos and video together in the one spot. But you had to really know what you were looking for to find it.
Perhaps the doggie-cam - and also touted model-cam - footage is to be used at some later date.
Memo to Versace: YouTube is not live-streaming video. Nor is uploading a gazillion photographs hours after the event.
It’s great that more and more fashion companies are interested in getting into social media and providing their audiences with content.
But try taking a leaf out of Dolce e Gabbana’s book.
Dolce e Gabbana manages to aggregate all its content under the Dolce e Gabbana umbrella.
The company does have a spinoff, magazine-style website - Swide - which pumps out a lot of exclusive content. Granted, the site has a rather baffling name - which, judging by its low Twitter follow count may confuse people. But at least Dolce e Gabbana is serious about social media and has dedicated resources to it.
And furthermore, of course, Dolce e Gabbana actually live-streams its runway shows to the net as they happen.
Here is a just-posted video from the LA Times blogs of the Bottega Veneta SS10 menswear show in Milan, which took place four hours ago. It features one of the biggest early trends of the season, that has been seen in a number of collections, including Dolce e Gabbana, Missoni and the just-wrapped Gucci: the cropped trouser. See the complete Missoni and Gucci collections on wwd.com.
