April Tiplady takes flight

McQ resort 2014 via style.com

You know April Tiplady. The brand new Adelaide face whose grandmother bought her a Finesse Models deportment course for her 14th birthday and who, in November last year, two years later, was signed worldwide by IMG Models. Then in March - a month before making her Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week Australia debut, walking in nine shows - she made an appearance at the Paris ready-to-wear shows and nabbed the cover of L'Officiel Singapore. Now 17, Tiplady has just popped up in the Resort 2014 lookbooks for the McQ diffusion label of British brand Alexander McQueen (above) and Italian designer Roberto Cavalli (below). And frockwriter hears she has some even bigger coups up her sleeve.

Fur realz - Fall/Winter 2011/2012

The European Fall/Winter 2011/2012 menswear season is off and running in Milan. After a day of shows, what are the early trends? Military detailing, velvet, drop-crotch trousers and a surprising amount of colour for a winter season. Of note, Burberry's tangerine and cyclamen pink pea coats, duffle and puffa jackets and Jil Sander's skinny knits, parkas and colour-blocked suiting in an eye-popping palette, which creative director Raf Simons looks to have carried over from his womens' spring 2011 show. Not to mention fur. This time last year we noted a preponderance of shaggy glam rock mens' coats in various fabrications. And although this season, Dolce e Gabbana used faux fur and Roberto Cavalli's patchwork fur coat had almost a vintage vibe, the luxury ante was definitely upped by Burberry, which showed a number of rabbit, lambskin and patchwork Finnish mink jackets, including one spectacular two-tone mink for a cool US$27,000. 

Gail Sorronda gets the Dolce e Gabbana treatment

Who needs Roberto Cavalli when you’re being mentored by Dolce e Gabbana? Overnight, Brisbane native Gail Reid popped up in this video interview on Dolce e Gabbana’s Swide website. Reid's five year-old Gail Sorronda label is one of 21 labels that were hand-picked by the Italian luxury titans for their brand new fashion incubator retail concept in Milan, Spiga2. “I love Gail Sorronda. It’s my taste” Stefano Gabbana told The Wall Street Journal last month. It has been a very big year for Reid. In March, she told frockwriter that she was being considered for a freelance consulting gig at Roberto Cavalli’s studio. By July, that had yet to transpire, but that month Reid was one of seven finalists in the 2010 edition of Who Is On Next, an emerging talent showcase in Italy that is jointly organised by Alta Roma and Vogue Italia. Great to see major fashion names supporting newbies although that said, it’s a little odd to see included in the Spiga2 lineup Paris-based Australian expat Martin Grant, who has been showing on schedule in Paris for a number of years. Grant established his label in Melbourne in 1982, when he was just 15.

Frankie goes to fashionwood

givenchy SS10/wwd.com

Jethro Cave might have an edgy look, a famous dad and good connections, not to mention a Gumby earring. But the real dark horse of the Australian mens modelling scene was, as it turns out, right under our nose whilst reporting on the recent menswear season. Meet Frankie Elliss-Galati. The 19 year-old Gold Coaster was discovered by Sydney-based photographer Chris Ferguson in a Brisbane sushi bar in January. After booking jobs for Vogue Australia and Bisonte, among others, he headed to the mens Spring/Summer 2010 shows in Europe. In his first international season he walked for names including Christian Dior Homme, Givenchy, Thierry Mugler, Gucci, Roberto Cavalli, Calvin Klein, Trussardi and Tim Hamilton (which he closed) - a feat noted by models.com, which included him on its Top 10 Men’s New Faces for SS10. Not that anyone thus far appears to have been aware of his nationality.

Although repped in Australia by Viviens, Elliss-Galati's mother agent is in fact LA-based Australian Patrick Corcoran, who, like Ferguson, is a former Chic Management booker.

At Givenchy (above), Elliss-Galati got to wear one of the more extreme studded pieces which were inspired by the proposed collaboration between Givenchy creative director Riccardo Tisci and the late Michael Jackson, for Jackson's O2 Centre concerts in London. Tisci was reportedly due to meet with Jackson about the costumes on Monday 29th June, obviously an appointment that Jackson never made.



christian dior homme SS10 (top); robert cavalli SS10/wwd.com

The Roberto Cavalli scuba pant - and the model who dropped 30 pounds to squeeze into it

robert cavalli uomo SS10/wwd.com

Overnight, a number of key menswear collections showed up on the Milan SS10 runway. Among the trends of note, a glut of eye-popping red suits at Dirk Bikkembergs, Salvatore Ferragamo, Enrico Coveri and Trussardi. Plaid at Alexander McQueen and Marc Jacobs. And muscle shirts at Prada, Calvin Klein and Trussardi. And just as Sunday's Gucci show was reportedly inspired by '70s flick The Deep, Robert Cavalli came up with a a scuba-inspired collection, whose hero garment was a curious trouser with a high, foldover waistand that resembled a surfer’s wetsuit with the top rolled down. Frockwriter is dubbing it the scuba pant. But more interesting than the clothes was The New York Times revelation that top 22 year-old Arab American model A. J. Abualrub (pictured above and below, right) dropped 30 pounds (13.64 kilos) for the season.

Abualrub told NYT journalist Guy Trebay that his natural weight is closer to 200 pounds, that he sees a nutritionist, that it was a challenge to take the weight off - but that he wound up booking more Milan Fashion Week shows than he had anticipated.

Noted Abualrub:

“I only eat, like, maybe twice a day”.

There has been much talk over the past week about the shrinking sample size in the womens’ fashion market, with Alexandra Shulman and Kirstie Clements, the editors of the British and Australian editions of Vogue, lamenting the tiny sizes of womens' current fashion samples.

Frockwriter has two observations to make here.

Firstly, anecdotally, the average age of a female runway model would appear to be younger than it was 15 years ago. Up to a decade younger.

And furthemore, the past 15 years has also reportedly witnessed a reduction in the mens' sample size, as part of what has been referred to as "the Hedi Sliminization" of the mens' fashion market.


robert cavalli uomo SS10/wwd.com

The creative director of YSL Rive Gauche Homme from 1997-1999 and then, notably, Christian Dior Homme, from 2000-2007, Hedi Slimane is credited with launching, among other silhouettes, the skinny jean trend which revolutionised both the menswear and womenswear markets.

Slimane's choice of ultra skinny models for his runway shows, and his muses - notably Brit rocker Pete Doherty, a longtime heroin user who pleaded guilty to heroin possession earlier this month - led to the widespread use of the term "heroin chic" to describe Slimane's aesthetic.

One might well ask just how much influence Slimane has wielded over the womens’ market in general.

As mentioned on this journalist's last blog Fully Chic last year, during one of several discussions about body image and model weight, over the past two years several reports have been published about the shrinking male sample size.

Here is one story from The Independent from February 2007, which mentions a book written by former male model, and recovered anorexic, Ron Saxon.

Here is another from The New York Times from November 2007, discussing the very fashion-obsessed Japanese market.

And here is yet another from February 2008, also from the NYT - and coincidentally also written by Guy Trebay.

Trebay began that February 2008 story with the following words:

“CREDIT Hedi Slimane or blame him”

In that story, Flaunt magazine’s Long Nguyen recounted that when he first entered the magazine business in 1994, the typical sample was an Italian 50. Six years later, reported Ngyen, it had shrunk to 48. By 2008, it was 46.

Nguyen told the NYT:

“At that point you might as well save money and just go over to the boy’s department”.

Burning down the (Cavalli) house

blip tv

An amusing video shot backstage at the Roberto Cavalli show in Milan this week, during which ace Belgralian backstage snapper Sonny Vandevelde grooves to Yellow Magic Orchestra, alerts authorities before a show light sets the tent on fire - and, of course, gets the girls.

All in a day's work really.


blip tv/fashionlab