Alison Veness-McGourty's 10 network

jordan graham/10 magazine australia

Kirstie Clements isn’t the only editor-in-chief to have toppled from the totem pole of Australian fashion magazines over the past two years. In December 2010, 17 months before Clements’ 13-year tenure at Vogue Australia was abruptly terminated, Alison Veness-McGourty upped stumps from Australia’s biggest magazine publisher, ACP Magazines [since acquired by the Bauer Media Group], after 11 years with the company, initially as deputy editor, then editor and editor-in-chief of Harper’s Bazaar and launch editor of Grazia Australia. Following a short stint as a freelance brand consultant, in August last year the Bristol-born fashion veteran announced a joint venture with UK-based Sophia Neophitou-Apostolou to publish Australian editions of Neophitou-Apostolou’s 11 year-old indie style bible 10 and its menswear offshoot 10 Men. After bubbling along on 10magazine.com.au’s digital platform since September, the Australian print editions finally see the light of day on February 1st. What will 10 and 10 Men Australia offer fashion consumers in an already-saturated magazine market and what are Veness-McGourty’s thoughts on the fashion and publishing industries, almost three decades after she launched her career on a London tabloid chasing Linda Evangelista and the Princess of Wales? Frockwriter asks her more than 10 questions.

Lanvin's Lucas Ossendrijver covers the launch issue of Manuscript

Sydney-based freelance fashion journo Mitchell Oakley-Smith isn’t one for resting on his laurels. Already the author of one coffee table book through Thames & Hudson Australia – Fashion: Australian and New Zealand designers – T&H Australia has just released a second collection of his designer vignettes, Interiors: Australian and New Zealand designers. And he’s just signed a third contract, this time with the Thames & Hudson mothership in London for another, slightly more complex tome that is due for release in late 2013 and is to be co-authored with Australian art curator and writer Alison Kubler. All under the age of 25. But that’s not all. Behold a preview of the first cover of a new menswear magazine called Manuscript, Oakley-Smith’s first effort as a publisher, which is out on Friday. Lensed by London-based Australian Paul Scala at the Lanvin headquarters in Paris, it stars Lanvin’s menswear director Lucas Ossendrijver, an extensive profile of whom features inside the issue. 

Ivy Shore

What a glorious Sydney summer's day for a Christmas party by the pool. That's what Pages Digital threw this afternoon at The Ivy's rooftop Pool Club. On deck were friends and family of the Sydney-based digital publisher (and frockwriter’s advertising partner), including managing director/founder Marnie Dibden Cate, husband Will ‘DJ Goodwill’ Cate, PD-ites Alex Light and Zac Bayly, designers Dion Lee, Carrie Cooper (Beau Coops) and Weave Dibden Neck (By Weave - also Marnie's sister). Much fun - and vodka - was had by all. But it wasn’t the only bash at the venue. Also poolside: the Christmas party of Sydney casting director and acting coach Sandra Lee Paterson. Could this perhaps explain why so many of the attendees on the other side of the pool looked like they were auditioning for a Sydney-based version of US reality show Jersey Shore? While observing the plethora of poufs, microshorts, daring decolletages, fake tans, testosterone and ripped abs, one wag dubbed the scene Ivy Shore. Click (here) to see frockwriter's Posterous pic gallery.

Jefferson Hack isn't the only big fashion name heading downunder in 2011

purple diary

Last night the L’Oréal Melbourne Fashion Festival announced more details of the lineup for its 2011 event, which will run from 14-20 March under a new creative director, Condé Nast's former mens fashion director Grant Pearce. Now in its 14th year, LMFF is a consumer-focussed event of in-season fashion parades and exhibitions that are open to the public. But ironically, it’s the industry-focussed Business Seminar that is arguably its hottest ticket, with a stellar lineup of speakers that has previously included former Selfridges ceo Vittorio Radice, Philippe Starck, Agent Provocateur’s Joe Corre and Serena Rees, Vivienne Westwood and last year, LMFF's first really big fashion kahuna, Calvin Klein Collection womenswear director Francisco Costa. In March, Jefferson Hack, editorial director of London’s Dazed Group, will join ACNE Studios ceo Mikael Schiller and Havas Worldwide ceo David Jones, in addition to 2011 Festival face, New York-based Australian actor Melissa George. George is a Perth native, but will nevertheless inject some Hollywood glamour into the event. 

Booked: FASHION by Mitchell Oakley Smith

Books on Australian fashion are few and far between. In fact Alexandra Joel’s Parade and Elina Mackay's The Great Aussie Fashion, both published in 1984 (with Parade reprinted in 1998) and David Meagher's 2008 Fashion Speak (in which Australasians account for half of Meagher's 14 designer profiles) are the sum total to date if frockwriter is not mistaken. Well now we can add Mitchell Oakley Smith’s first literary effort to this very slim list: FASHION, a 352-page book on Australian – and New Zealand – designers, published by no less than Thames & Hudson Australia, the local arm of one of the world’s most prestigious fashion and art publishers (to be sold internationally as well). Here is an exclusive preview of the cover: a Georges Antoni shot of Anthea Page in Toni Maticevski’s silk cotton voile and triacetate ballgown. According to the notes, the dress is from the Autumn/Winter 2006 collection and according to Oakley Smith, the shot was first published in Oyster.

The dress bears a strong resemblance to the "doona" dresses that were later presented by Maticevski in New York in February 2007 for the Fall/Winter 0708 season. And no, apparently that's no Photoshop job - the model is actually carrying an eski bag emblazoned with an Australian flag.

Sydney-based Oakley Smith is associate editor of GQ Australia and has been writing about fashion for four years, for publications including BELLE, Myer Emporium and The Australian.

Accompanying a fantastic selection of imagery (see below) are 50,000 words profiling 70 designers, including Akira Isogawa, Josh Goot, Zimmermann, Karen Walker, Kate Sylvester, Nom*D, World, Birthday Suit, Romance Was Born and Arnsdorf.

The book took Oakley Smith two years and he approached five different publishers before hooking up with T&H.

Available from August 1 ($79.95).








All images supplied by Thames & Hudson
(Top to bottom)
Toni Maticevski by Georges Antoni.
Ksubi
RM Williams
Fernando Frisoni
Chronicles of Never
Marnie Skillings

Master blaster: Indie Kiwi startup asks "WTF has happened to magazines today?"

Last night, frockwriter’s attention was drawn to Master Mouse Patrol, an interesting new, free magazine from New Zealand which describes itself as "sexy, yet polite". Developed by three Kiwis - Sam Williamson, Benny Castles (whose day job is menswear director of Auckland-based fashion brand WORLD) and Richie Wildman - the magazine is edited in Sydney, printed in Auckland and designed in New York. Here is the link to the website, which adds new material on an ongoing basis and also includes a PDF of print edition one: a compendium of musings on New Zealand, Australia, travel, food, the arts, photography and a comic from Kiwi illustrator Jooles Clements. It’s the second magazine to have launched from within the NZ fashion community – after Karen Walker’s travel site, Runaway Now.

But not even Walker’s more illustrious guest contributors in the form of Sir Richard Branson and model Shalom Harlow are a patch on Master Mouse Patrol’s anonymous "fallen drag queen" scribe “Bambi”, who lets rip on a wide variety of topics and, elsewhere in the issue, plays resident Agony Aunt.

With kind permission from Bambi and Master Mouse Patrol, here is her dissertation on the state of contemporary fashion magazines, which frockwriter believes deserves far wider play. Enjoy.




WHAT THE F*** has happened to magazines today?

It’s bad enough the publisher thinks he/she/it is doing us (the reader) a favour by keeping the cover price under $10 (f***ing arseholes) in a genuine and deluded attempt to remain relevant in the market, and to keep competitive so that they can slim up to advertisers and lie that they have a readership! What readership!? Even lithium-fuelled subordinates are turning off magazines by the millions!

DO YOU know why?

Well it’s because they write shit about shit! All they worry about is getting that prestigious tampon or Gatorade advert, coupled with the drug-f***-lust for the freebee! What makes it even worse is that the freebees you are getting are so pathetic and cheap you actually don’t realise that even your advertiser hates you! You lazy Mother F***ers, all you care about is how fat you look in those jeans!! F*** I hate you so much! The reader gets a regurgitated piece of nothing filled with press releases whilst you plump your lips with free arsecream!

You fly around the planet consuming stuff and not really believing in any of it because you are basically the nerd outsider from the schoolyard that everyone hated!

Magazines were once fantasy-filled bibles of style, fashion, modernity! They allowed us, the great unwashed, to dream, to aspire, to want to work harder for a better life… OR was that all an illusion and really the fuckers never ever dreamed for us!?

I loved looking through National Geographic. Reading about exotic travels, looking at bizarre and beautiful people, things, places. Even the advertising was aspiring: Rolls Royce engines, Lufthansa flying to Machu Picchu! Or the Rolex Oyster, how it was made and how good it looked whilst scuba diving in St Tropez, ads telling you of an excellence that you may want to experience or have! Old Vogues, old any magazine were different, you know why? Well they were alive, they had a soul, the writers cared, the photographers cared, the editors cared, everyone actually cared!

It’s so simple - money was not the only frikkin object! The craft of the story, the committment to the photo, this was what mattered, the money came later! That’s why we have iconic publications (only a few), they remain beacons amongst a sea of vile, useless, fat, hideous, mundane magazines that do nothing but kill the planet!

I was recently lucky enough to meet with the Editor At Large for American Vogue, and it struck me how nothing mattered to him except the moment, the creation of the moment and the recording of the moment! Perfect for Vogue! I realised spontaneity, campness and humour all made taste and that really is Vogue. It’s an amazing formula, a recorder of fashion, he made the moment and then recorded it and off he went first class to Sydney and back home to NYC and then Paris! And here lies the thing! It’s that exact free spirit! That powerhouse of character, a career spent seeding a drag aesthetic that makes a magazine great! Remember it’s not war and peace, it’s a frikkin magazine! It is ephemeral, a thing that exists only to record the moment!

Magazines are still extremely important vehicles in connecting our planet, moving culture and society forward away from ignorance, bigotry and hatred towards Prada, Louboutin and Gucci!

But more and more I see a cancer creep into the industry and slowly killing it; this cancer of seriousness, of self-importance - and, unfortunately, there are too many mediocre people fuelled up with degrees, believing that they are the elite, the one that has the god-given right to take the freebee and then basically lie to us all about society today, distorting the truth and assassinating the moment!

I hate you all!

To all the f****ing hideous magazines that I see on the newsstands around the world I dearly hope you all go under or even better you end up under the umbrella of ACP, where your life will be a slow living hell, where even your shit has to be justified to a manager, then quantified by an accountant! I hate you all and you deserve to die!

X Bambi


All artwork supplied by master mouse patrol

Open Sesame

A little link love for a cool Australian online startup, Sesame Magazine, founded by Melbourne stylist Nadia Barbaro. Frockwriter is honoured to be included in this edition's Blogs We <3 section. For a backgrounder on Nadia, here's a Q&A on The Design Files.

The downunder Allure of Jezebel?

racked

Could Gawker Media's high profile ladyblog Jezebel be heading to Australia for a slice of the A$1.8billion Oz online advertising pie? That's what some are wondering, after spotting this seek.com.au advertisement from Allure Media, which is looking for editorial staff for the imminent launch of "a well-known women's lifestyle network" in this market. The Sydney-based digital publisher already owns the Oz licenses to Gawker Media's Defamer, Gizmodo, Kotaku and Lifehacker - in addition to the local license to parenting blog Babble - a network it claims attracts over 1.65 million readers per month. UPDATE 14/09/09: IT'S NOT JEZEBEL - ALLURE MEDIA ANNOUNCES THE LAUNCH OF THE SUGAR NETWORK INTO AUSTRALIA.

Jezebel, whose promo line is “Celebrity, Sex, Fashion for women, Without Airbrushing”, attracts a monthly audience of 1.4million according to Quantcast, 1.1million of that hailing from the US, with 49percent female readership.

And while the site's edgy, neo-feminist slant has proven popular with readers, others have called out what they claim to be the double-standards of some Jezebel writers who lament the sexualisation of women, while posting degrading images of themselves.

Over the past 12 months the site garnered considerable interest over the mystery surrounding its anonymous model blogger "Tatiana", who unmasked herself last month as Jenna Sauers (although her ID came as no surprise to readers of this blog).

Allure Media's md Chris Janz did not return calls this afternoon and two media buyers told frockwriter that they had as yet heard nothing.

According to Fusion Strategy media analyst Steve Allen, a local Jezebel would be "an interesting move indeed. Allure has come onto our radar because they are building traffic and assets quite quickly".