Banned by Instagram: Matthew Stone's Pussy Riot protest

matthew stone via showstudio

We first met enigmatic British multi-disciplinary artist, writer, musician, DJ - oh, and shaman - Matthew Stone in 2007 backstage at Gareth Pugh. Stone is a graduate of the Camberwell College of Arts and a co-founder of the Peckham art collective !WOWOW! and his work has been exhibited all over the world. Over the past 18 months, moreover, he has crossed over into commercial fashion photography. Stone's work appears on the cover of this month's i-D magazine and within weeks, as we originally revealed, his advertising campaign for Jean Paul Gaultier's Kokorico fragrance – starring a naked Andrej Pejic – will land. But none of this appears to have impressed hipster photo app Instagram, which censored Stone's NSFW artwork in support of jailed Russian feminist punk rock outfit Pussy Riot.

Cat gets the Tweety Bird

Since The Daily Telegraph published (this) image of Catherine McNeil at the annual Bondi Icebergs New Year's Day party, McNeil's usually supportive fan base has been in overdrive on the haterade. "Bogan" sniped one fan on McNeil's discussion thread on The Fashion Spot web forum. "She just needs to lay off the booze, the salt and sugar for a while is all" noted another. It wasn't the first time McNeil's new short black bob had seen the light of day - frockwriter first mentioned it in October - but together with a new facial piercing and the unflattering angle, shot while McNeil looked to be dancing with Daniella Rech, the photographer wife of expat Sydney show producer Kannon Rajah, it wasn't really the clearest image. Thanks to what is either McNeil's new Twitter feed, or else an elaborate fake using her happy snaps, here are a few other recent shots that demonstrate the new 'do, which has been cut shorter still - two featuring McNeil's great mate, Sydney model Stephanie Carta. 

Inception via Twitter? Black nail polish-wearing ABC anchor dreams of Freddie Mercury duet

As the anchor of ABC’s prestigious late-night current affairs bulletin Lateline and the network’s former Washington and National Security correspondent, Walkley Award-winning Australian journalist and author Leigh Sales has covered some big stories. What’s her dream job? Noted Sales on Twitter this morning, “I had the coolest dream last night that I was playing a grand piano with Freddie Mercury. Real life seems a bit greyer today”. Now it's unclear if Sales has always been a Freddie Mercury fangurl - or just how well she was previously versed in Mercury’s pioneering efforts vis-à-vis the black nail polish beauty trend. Coincidentally, however, on August 23rd, two days after Sales played a key on air role during the ABC’s federal election coverage – wearing black nail polish - we Tweeted the following (tongue in cheek) observation: “top marks BTW go to abc #ausvotes anchor @leighsales for doing more for the visibility of black nail polish than freddie mercury on sat”. We know Sales spotted it, because she immediately replied via Twitter:  

Miranda Kerr definitely hooked up with Balenciaga last week - and that's definitely not her Twitter account

The Balenciaga plot thickens. This morning frockwriter mentioned the mystery surrounding a new photo of Miranda Kerr. According to the @MirandaMayKerr Twitter account, it was just taken during a Balenciaga Resort collection shoot. Well Kerr's personal publicist, Carlii Lyon, who just spoke with Kerr in New York, tells frockwriter that the shot was definitely taken during a Balenciaga "event" in New York last week. What was Kerr doing there and why is the makeup she's wearing identical to that seen on Balenciaga's models in these photographs of the collection which were published on Style.com and wwd.com on June 9? Lyon said she was unable to elaborate on the nature of Kerr's involvement with the brand, other than to say she was definitely working with it in some capacity. Nor does Lyon - or indeed Kerr, she claims - know who took the photo. One thing Lyon could confirm was that @MirandaMayKerr is a fake account. Lyon said that she and Kerr are attempting to have it shut down - as they have done with several others. Lyon confirmed that @MirandaKerr is the only bona fide Miranda Kerr Twitter account. Unfortunately, it's not particularly active at the moment. Nor has it been verified with Twitter, which doesn't help. They're working on it, says Lyon.

Miranda's Balenciaga hat trick?

@mirandamkerr

Well that new "cardinal rule for models" (ie do not leak information from jobs on social media) might not apply to Miranda Kerr. In what is either an elaborate fake Twitter account ruse - or the real deal - "@MirandaMKerr" left several Twitter clues from the set of a "Balenciaga Resort" shoot yesterday. "Back from Balenciaga Resort, It was awesome moment. Always fun to work with talented people" they noted, before posting an autoportrait showing an interesting winged pink smokey eye beauty look - identical to that sported by Balenciaga's models in these images of the same collection that were published last week on Style.com. But is this in fact Miranda Kerr? The account has not yet been verified by Twitter and there have been fake Miranda Kerr accounts before. Frockwriter is checking with her agents in Sydney and New York. If it is a ruse, then at least one bona fide supermodel Twitterer has been sucked in by it - fellow Victoria's Secret model Selita Ebanks - whose Twitter account has been verified by Twitter - is following @MirandaMayKerr. See updated post: It's a fake Twitter account, but that's definitely Kerr at Balenciaga last week.

It seems like a lot of trouble and expense to go to for a lookbook. Campaign? If the photos do emerge, then they would represent the third consecutive Balenciaga gig for Kerr, who walked in the French brand's Spring/Summer 2010 and Fall/Winter 2010/2011 runway shows.

It would also be the latest coup in Kerr's quest to refashion herself from a purely "commercial" star of Victoria's Secret lingerie fame, to high fashion ice queen, a trajectory that has also seen her book campaigns for Prada and Jil Sander, walk for Prada and model for edgier publications such as French Numéro and Britain's i-D.

Frockwriter can't help thinking that this is definitely a two-way street, with some of those far less accessible high fashion brands hoping for some commercial ruboff in the prevailing challenging economic climate.

And the Walkley for new media douchebaggery apparently goes to... me

sassybella twitter

I was interested to spot this post from Clare Fletcher. Entitled, "Anti social media" it was about how much Fletcher had enjoyed last week's Portable/Refinery 29 presentation in Sydney - save for my extreme rudeness in Tweeting during the Q&A with the New York fashion site's co-founder Philippe von Borries and creative director Piera Gelardi. The Q&A that I myself was conducting. Now it's true, I do like a chat. I was constantly busted at school for talking, passing notes and being generally disruptive. I so abused the message system of John Fairfax's antediluvian computer network back in the 1980s that the message function was removed from my profile. Not once, but twice - after I discovered a way to send messages without it the first time. I've had a Mac and a fax machine for 21 years. A BlackBerry for five. A blog for four. And I have been on Twitter for three. During RAFW last year some took issue with my real-time Twitter coverage of the event, indignant that they were robbed of longform, more considered - and of course, 100% gratis - analysis. And yes I did Tweet during last week's Refinery 29 presentation. A fact that was apparently not lost on Fletcher, who writes:

"...it's a little off topic but the thing I was most struck by at the Refinery29 talk was the behaviour of the MC..... while she was interviewing Philip and Piera from Refinery29, she was tweeting.

I'm talking about breaking eye contact during an interview to tap away on a Blackberry. Now, I understand that her social media coverage would have given the event more attention that it might have recieved otherwise. I realise that her Twitter followers would have wanted to know her thoughts on the event as it unfolded. She was doing her job. But it just seemed quite rude. What is the etiquette here? Am I being old fashioned?"

I would just like to clarify a few points here.

The only Tweets dispatched during the presentation by yours truly covered a few key points made by von Borries and Gelardi during their addresses, which took approximately 50 minutes. While I was seated in the audience. As did other attendees.

I did not, however, Tweet during the Q&A itself. I was referring to a list of prepared questions on my BlackBerry.

At the very end, as we were wrapping up, I checked to see if there had been any responses to the earlier Tweets. I thought von Borries and Gelardi might find this feedback interesting. And retweeted several times was the following point made by von Borries:

"You can't do things the old way anymore".

Indeed.

Some people use a notebook on the public speaking podium. Others, cue cards. It's not considered rude if they break eye contact to refer to their notes and questions, so what's the big deal with a handheld?

Fletcher, FYI, is the assistant editor of The Walkley Magazine, which is published by the Walkley Foundation, a non profit dedicated to the promotion of excellence in Australian journalism and which administers the industry's leading annual awards, the Walkleys.

Tracy Grimshaw gets the cold shoulder from Twitter's fashion police

screengrab by kollektor

Well we know the importance of the statement shoulder in fashion right now, but who’d have thought Tracy Grimshaw would be among the first to champion the look on Australian mainstream television? The anchor of the Nine Network’s tabloid current affairs program A Current Affair has recently taken to sporting a series of strong-shouldered jackets. Instead of being applauded for her sartorial bravura however, Grimshaw has been slammed by that insta-barometer of public opinion, social media. Although apparently it is not the first time Grimshaw has worn the look on-air, tonight’s jacket did not go down well with Twitter's fashion police.

Noted Luke Carter:

“Is tracey grimshaw trying out for NFL or what?”

Angexo:

“Tracey Grimshaw looks RIDICULOUS!!!!!”

Dean Worland:

“WTF, Tracy Grimshaw doing the big shoulder on A Current Affair tonight, there's an age limit to fashion forwardedness, buzz cut is needed TG”

whatsonthetube:

“Is it just me or does Tracy Grimshaw look like she has just come from the Star Trek set tonight?”

Defixiones:

“Jesus Tracy Grimshaw ditch the shoulder pads already”

While ziz wondered:

“wonder what gordon ramsey would make of tracey grimshaw's shoulder pads tonight”

With only tinaintassie offering some words of support:

“Let Tracey Grimshaw know she looks great tonight. Love the big shoulders coming back”

Frockwriter is still attempting to ID the brand behind tonight’s two-tone cream and black affair with epaulettes - a Covers '80s redux is apparently one possibility. Update 11.16pm: Since ID'd by a reader as Australian designer Carla Zampatti.


carla zampatti

Meanwhile, we did manage to track down one Australian television industry source - who didn't seem particularly fond of the look either.

“Clearly Tracy is embracing the new shoulder pad big time” said the source.

“The shoulder pad on a bigger woman, you put them on tv, it’s huge. She’s tall – she’d easily be 5’10” in bare feet - and she’s got big shoulders. She can look bigger than she really is and she’s someone who probably doesn’t need a shoulder pad like that. They can look very modern on a young, little thing but once you get to a certain age, it can look a little dangerous”.

The source added: “Noone can change that woman. It’s the bane of the network’s life, her not wanting to take advice. She’s dressing herself”.

Bluralism, finally a legit art movement

lindsay lohan by chrissy miller/nytimes.com

Many railed over the quality of images that were snapped by mobile phone and uploaded to Twitter at Sydney's Rosemount Australian Fashion Week in May. “Blurry”, “average” and “grainy” were terms used to slag the images off, with several parties asking the Twitterati to cease and desist. Some derided the phenomenon as “the failure of new media”. We, the new media douchebags, girded our loins and smartphones, dubbed the movement Bluralism and joked that we might one day stage an exhibition. Well, typically, New York has beaten us to it. On Wednesday, the Stephan Weiss Studio staged an exhibition of camera phone images taken by 14 artists including Cass Bird, Justin Giunta, Richard Kern, Danielle Levitt and Chrissy Miller, who were each given a Casio Exilim Mobile with which to document one week. Although one great big promo for Casio, photos taken using other mobile phone brands were also included. With New York Fashion Week eight weeks away and more and more fashion players piling onto Twitter, frockwriter wonders if any of the city's more social media-savvy types have considered aggregating the best images from the anticipated deluge of SM coverage.

Tom and Suri cruise into Myer - and a Twitter storm

hot30 twitpic

Well Australian department stores Myer and David Jones might have abysmal Web 1.0 websites – and snub indie bloggers when it comes to their fashion shows. But it’s never too late to embrace social media and it looks like Myer is off to a flying start. Overnight the net has been abuzz with news that Tom Cruise shopped at Myer Melbourne yesterday with daughter Suri in tow. And furthermore, that he purchased a lipgloss from Australian beauty brand Bloom. How do we know? Well checking Twitter Search – and online time stamps – the news was first broken on Twitter by "Court Robbo" at approximately 5.23pm, noting, “Have only lovely things to say about Tom and Suri Cruise ...who i just met in myer melbourne!” We don’t know much about Court Robbo, other than the fact that he/she both follows, and is followed by, people with advertising industry connections. At the same time, Miranda Malaniuk chimed in on Twitter with the following observation: “Tom Cruise spotted shopping at Myer. Bought a $15 stick horse from toys. On sale. Tightarse.."

One hour later, Myer’s official Twitter feed retweeted (re-posted) both Tweets.

One hour after that, Bloom cosmetics provided the following information by Twitter:

“News just in - TOM CRUISE buys Lip Gloss Amore from Myer Melbourne. EXCITING”

At exactly the same time that Bloom was Tweeting, Hot30 Countdown - the 2Day FM radio program hosted weeknights from 7-10pm by Tim Lee and Carla “Biggzy” Bignasca, and yes out of Sydney – posted the following on its Twitter feed:

“Tom Cruise & Suri shopping at Myer!”

The Tweet was accompanied by the above image of Cruise and daughter with, conveniently, a Myer shopping bag. The shot looks to have been taken from a cameraphone.

Within minutes, Australia blogger Helen Lee spotted the Bloom Tweet and penned a blog post about Cruise’s lip gloss purchase on her Sassybella blog.

Two hours later, at 9.25pm, The Melbourne Herald Sun reported that Cruise and Suri were in Myer, but that Suri had merely "played" with Bloom's products.

Lee might be in Sydney, but evidently her intel is better than The Herald Sun's.

Apart from numerous other Cruise/Myer/Bloom tweets and retweets, overnight New York magazine’s The Cut blog picked up on the Sassybella story and off it went across the net – until Marie Claire Australia and sundry other locals got to work this morning to discover that it was news.

All up, a great PR get for both Myer and Bloom. While the normally reclusive Cruise may feel a little played – and soiled.

It's a great example of how marketers are using social media to flog their products.

But just how well are they using it? Is Court Robbo, for example, connected to Myer advertising in any way? And did Myer supply the photo?

According to a 2Day FM spokeswoman, the shot of Cruise was emailed to the station by a Melbourne woman called "Marie" from Pascoe Vale, Victoria. She received a prize for emailing the photo.

The spokeswoman noted, “They spoke to her on air, she sounded like she was in her early 20s”.

The listener had originally phoned in to 2Day FM’s Melbourne affiliate, Fox FM, which has been running a competition to find Tom Cruise.

The spokeswoman said she was unaware of any connection between the listener and Myer - but confirmed that Myer is an advertiser with 2DayFM and, she assumes, nationally as well.

Glamour Kills pwns Twitter

mark capicotto/huck magazine

Ashton Kutcher has a lot to answer for. If you were wondering - as was frockwriter - firstly, what the hell Glamour Kills is. And secondly, what it is doing in Twitter Trending Topics (initially listed in, but now gone from, the Top 10), the answer is simple. Mark Capicotto, the 22 year-old CEO of the four year-old New York streetwear company, simply asked his 10,000-strong Twitter tribe to Tweet the word #glamourkills and they obliged. Capicotto, as it emerges, is a graphic designer who did freelance work for bands, before launching the Glamour Kills clothing line (and store: 544 Main Street, Beacon, New York) in his first year of college in 2005. Any fashion and media veterans still scratching their heads about how social media is going to affect both industries would be well advised to take note of young Turks like Capicotto, who not only conducts promotions but even recruits his models via Twitter. In an interview with Shred magazine in March, Capicotto noted of social networking sites, "They’re free and help you reach your target demographic directly. On a side note, Tumblr and Twitter are going to be huge. Get on it :)!....You have to play the game to change the game”.

Lights, camera, Twitter

on location in nice/rob luketic's twitpic

Some time over the past two months, in between posting over two thousand 140-character reports, replies, photos and live-streaming videos to his 11,000-strong Twitter tribe, Robert Luketic has been directing a Hollywood blockbuster.

The Lionsgate thriller, working title Five Killers, stars A-lister Ashton Kutcher as a retired hitman who is pursued by assassins. Kutcher is flanked by a stellar support cast that is headlined by Katherine Heigl, Tom Selleck, Catherine O’Hara and Martin Mull.

At press time the film was still shooting in Atlanta, Georgia, after a fortnight stint in and around the glitzy locales of France’s Côte d’Azur.

This is Australian-born Luketic’s sixth feature since he first caught the attention of Hollywood in 1995 at the age of 23 with the festival circuit hit short Titsiana Booberini – before breaking through with the 2001 box office smash rom-com Legally Blonde.

However Five Killers is shaping up as a first for not only Luketic, but the film business itself.

Since the birth of cinema, the filmmaking process has been documented in various forms. Examples include Les Blank’s 1982 documentary Burden of Dreams, which charted the making of Werner Herzog’s Fitzcarraldo and Robert Rodriguez’s 1995 book Rebel Without a Crew about his 1992 feature El Mariachi. Since the world went online in 1995, new media-savvy filmmakers such as Kevin Smith, Peter Jackson and Brian Singer have used blogs and multimedia to document their various activities.

But Five Killers appears to be the very first major film production whose shooting schedule has been documented in real time using social media.

And to be quite specific, using Twitter: the public microblogging service via which people – 14 million and counting – communicate to the world in 140-character “tweets”.

Launched three years ago, Twitter’s popularity has recently skyrocketed, experiencing quadruple digit growth over the past twelve months - and revolutionizing the news delivery business along the way.

Forget DVD special features, 13 months before Five Killers is even due for theatrical release, Luketic’s Twitter fan base has been drawn into the normally exclusive world of big budget filmmaking and made privy to blow-by-blow accounts about almost every facet of the production – as the cameras rolled.

From location glimpses to peeks inside the special FX engine room, stolen moments of stars on set and quirky photo vignettes - including a shot of the guest director's chair made for Kutcher's wife, Demi Moore, whilst visiting the shoot location in France, complete with the name "Gladys Kravitz" - as well as individual introductions to seemingly every last member of the normally faceless production crew.

There has also been a series of live-streamed video dispatches, including one account – shot in the staff canteen over lunch - recounting how Kutcher had just accidentally knocked a stuntman out cold during an action take. Oops.

Kutcher is perfect for this role in more ways than one. Having raced CNN to be the first Twitterer with one million followers last month, Kutcher's Twitter feed is now the world's most popular and he is also Tweeting from the Five Killers set. Demi Moore also tweeted and shot live-streamed videos during the Côte d'Azur shoot.

In spite of the score of assistants at his disposal, Luketic insists that absolutely noone else comes between him, his iPhone, laptop and his Twitter audience. And, reveals Luketic, this was cause for some initial studio concern.

“The studio was a little apprehensive at first - they even asked I give my password to them so they could ‘manage’ it for me” says Luketic. “That was not going to happen. Ultimately, once they saw how my followers grew each day, they became very supportive and, in fact, are as addicted to the Tweets as anyone. I get emails asking for more or wondering where I am should I not Twitter for a few hours”.

With the weight of what Luketic reports is Lionsgate’s biggest film budget to date riding on his shoulders, how does he concentrate on the task to hand while simultaneously logging it?

“It’s surprisingly easy” says Luketic. “My sets are very organized and smooth running for the most part, so it’s no effort at all to shoot a pic, type 140 characters, and post it for the world to see. It’s actually a lot of fun and I will have an awesome timeline of making this movie at the end. So while some see it as junk food, I see it as a diary or memento of sorts. Realistically, it takes me 30 seconds to snap a picture, treat with an App like Camerabag, and then post it. I guess anyone could do it. Obviously, it’s a film set and there will be times when I have focus for nothing but the task at hand.

“It has not changed my approach to filmmaking. But it has made me more proactive and in control of what people see regarding ‘behind the scenes’. It’s not cookie cutter. From the mundane to the mysterious, at least it’s my side of things. My say. My Twitter”.

But apparently it wasn’t only Lionsgate that harboured concerns about Twittering Five Killers.

Prior to the shoot, Luketic had already been using Twitter and Facebook for three years – but only ever set to private and accessed by his close friends.

It was not until a dinner conversation with friend and colleague, Dana Brunetti, on the eve of the Five Killers shoot, that Brunetti managed to twist Luketic’s arm to ‘open up’.

Notes Luketic, “I lived for so many years in a cocoon – coddled and protected by my business - it was time to go out on my own. I feel stronger and happier for having done it. Thanks little bird”.

Brunetti, the president of Trigger Street Productions, founder of TriggerStreet.com and a producer on Luketic’s 2008 feature 21, says that although studios have a love/hate relationship with social networks such as Twitter, social media is a runaway train.

“Studios love the promotional aspect of Twitter, but fear the loss of control they normally have always had aside from the occasional leak of information or distant paparazzi shot of the set” says Brunetti. “Now people are ‘leaking’ information and posting photos from the set itself while it happens. Twitter is basically a live feed for information. I've experienced the studio reaction to this on a couple of my films in the past including 21, as on our site TriggerStreet.com, we've had a moblog [mobile blog] up for a couple of years now that gave us this same ability”.

He adds, “When I started uploading pics from the set of films like Fanboys and 21, and the studios realized this, they quickly grew concerned and wanted to stop it all together as they always had approved what photos from set went out anywhere. Ultimately we agreed that I would post only certain photos.

"That was two and three years ago, but now with Twitter, even that control is out the window, as everyone with a cell phone can post a message, picture, or video making it next to impossible to rein in. Then when you have the director doing it, as well as the stars, the snowball has begun and it becomes unstoppable. Rather than fighting it, the studios will have to adapt and embrace this to use to their advantage, which I believe they are apprehensively starting to do. But I don't think it will before long before they begin to see the true power it can have for a project”.

Cinema cognoscenti view Luketic’s Five Killers Twitter diary as an inevitable step in the evolution of a medium which originated with a single projector screening on a wall.

“It’s measure of the zeitgeist” says Peter Giles, director of digital media at the Australian Film Television and Radio School.

“It's not just filmmakers who are engaging in it [social media], it's across the board in every business. Robert is making a movie that’s going to last for an hour and a half, but this is the key way of connecting with people in a more durable way, in order to prepare them for the movie and in order to get them talking about it as well. So it’s linked to marketing but I think it’s more than that really. It’s a real-time exchange of information in between a director and their audience”.

Joost Den Hartog, director of the Australian International Documentary Conference, reports that the documentary field was recently shaken up by the 'participatory media experiment' RiP: A remix manifesto. Engineered by documentary filmmaker and new media director Brett Gaylor, the film examines copyright issues in the information age and Gaylor’s audience contributed to the filmmaking process via the director’s video remix community opensoureccinema.org.

But the social media documentation of traditional filmmaking, notes Den Hartog, might well be pioneering not only a standalone media experience, but a new media mashup genre.

“When filmmaking started it, you shot something and then you had to find somebody who had a projector and then we had broadcasting, which distributed it a bit more widely and then we had VHS, Betamax and then the DVD, which had a bit of an interactive menu on it” says Den Hartog.

“Cinema is going from being a one way street to a more and more interactive form of media. What would be really interesting and sort of revolutionary is if, during the filmmaking process, the comments he [Luketic] gets change the film that he eventually delivers? That’s what is new about this way of documenting. It’s a two-way technology”.





Originally published (in a much tighter format) in The Weekend Australian Magazine, May 16th 2009.

New York Times chairman makes a WISH

pentagram

Well it’s been a New York Times kinda fortnight. First the NYT’s style supremo blog The Moment published a photo a day throughout RAFW, snapped by frockwriter buddy Sonny Vandevelde. Then on Monday, The Moment ran a slideshow of Vandevelde's RAFW shots (together with our mini event wrap). Now comes word that no less than The New York Times Company chairman and publisher, Arthur Sulzberger Jr, may have his antennae tuned to downunder buzz.

In the annual meeting of stockholders on April 23, Sulzberger waxed lyrical about the company’s achievements in these so terribly trying times.

Sulzberger spent quite some time discussing the activities of the company's digital division.

Sulzberger told shareholders that in spite of the difficult economy, digital revenues continued to rise in 2008, accounting for 12percent of total revenues – up 2percent on 2007 – and that in March (2009, one assumes) The Times Company boasted “the 13th largest presence on the Web, with 52 million unique visitors in the United States”. Sulzberger did not cite any sources for the latter claim.

Sulzberger then added:

“Throughout 2008 and the first months of 2009, we have continued to create a new form of Web journalism that is both informative and compelling. Our goal is to respond to our audiences’ demand for interactivity, community and multimedia, as well as news and information on an increasingly wide range of topics....

“One good example of our learning and adapting occurred in February at the Milan Fashion Show. The New York Times’s T Magazine reported a particularly important change in designers at a fashion line. However, it did not do so in print. Indeed, it didn’t initially appear in our Style Magazine’s blog, The Moment. Instead, the news alert was posted to The Moment’s Twitter account, informing 100,000 followers in a single tweet”.

If the last paragraph sounds awfully familiar to regular readers of this blog and indeed, of The Australian’s WISH magazine, then that could be because the paragraph bears a striking resemblance to the lead of this journalist’s recent social media and fashion story in WISH.

The WISH story opened with an analysis of the recent social media activities of The Moment, specifically on Twitter (here is the slightly longer original version of the story, as published on this blog).

The information was the fruit of original research and had not previously been correlated into any other story.

The WISH story started:

“TALK of the town has Alessandra Facchinetti (ex Valentino) already working on Tom Ford's nascent women's line. So reported The New York Times' T Magazine from Milan Fashion Week on February 28, floating the juiciest rumour of the autumn-winter show season. The news was not, however, broken by the print edition, nor even by the style magazine's blog, The Moment. Instead, a BlackBerry alert posted to The Moment's Twitter account informed 100,000 followers in a single "tweet".

Frockwriter has it on good authority that the NYT PR director was apprised of the WISH story upon publication, who then included a precis in the following day’s executive summary.

Funny how sometimes it takes an outside perspective to find out just what your own staff are up to.