Abbey Lee Kershaw has been MIA on the world’s fashion runways for two seasons, having recently gone
on modelling hiatus to shoot her first feature, Mad Max: Fury Road. And now it seems she can't even get a break on Facebook and YouTube, with some recent artistic efforts by Kershaw and her band apparently banned by the social media giants.
Elle Macpherson has hosted the first season of Fashion Star on NBC in the US and two seasons, so far, of Britain and Ireland’s Next Top Model on Sky Living. Now another Sydney expat, Laura Brown, is getting a crack at hosting a broadcast fashion show beyond these shores – at least, a mini online version. Here is a preview of The Look, which will debut on the new Hearst/YouTube channel Hello Style tomorrow.
Well Tom Ford certainly got off to a cracking start in 2011, uploading images of his new eyewear campaign which co-stars Abbey Lee Kershaw. Evidently Ford is another client who didn’t mind Kershaw’s new platinum blonde do – even apparently adding hair extensions. Now (viaHomotography) comes a video of that top-secret debut Tom Ford womenswear show which was presented to a tightly-edited throng of just 100 at New York Fashion Week in September, with highly restricted camera access. Ford has spent a lot of time talking down the new digital news domain, telling US Vogue, "I do not understand everyone's need to see everything online the day after the show". Now that it’s crunch time for Ford's collection to hit stores, frockwriter has little doubt he is thrilled that social media is spreading the buzz.
Two weeks ago, Nike broke its own viral record for the most views of an online video in a single week (7.8million) with its Write The Future video, produced in the leadup to the World Cup. Adidas has just returned fire with this epic homage to the famous Star Wars cantina scene starring a raft of music and sports stars, including David Beckham, Snoop Dog, Daft Punk and Noel Gallagher. At a mere 100K views at time of writing, watch this go viral...
Here is a sweet video made by some fans of Canadian supermod Coco Rocha, after Rocha invited video submissions from the readers of her Oh So Coco! blog. Considering that the eight week old blog already boasts 568 followers, it’s safe to assume that Rocha may have received quite a few. Rocha's brief: “I want to see YOU making movies of us”. It’s kind of hard not to like Rocha. She writes for, thanks and engages her fans – as opposed to penning tortured self-analysis. And she does not seem to take herself too seriously. She goofs it up. She hoofs it up Irish dancing. And perhaps most interesting of all, Rocha has managed to climb to the top of her profession without being hyper thin - indeed, even going public on the industry pressure to “look anorexic” and the retouching that is commonplace in fashion magazines. In many ways Coca Rocha is a kind of everywoman in an industry which excludes anyone who is not beautiful, tall, hyper thin – and, in western markets at least, predominantly white. Set to Britney Spears’ Piece Of Me paparazzi lament, the video was created by “olivercyyu”, who describes himself as a 16 year-old Canadian.
“A lot of time and effort has been put into this so please consider watching it” notes olivercyyu in the YouTube intro.
Intercut between still shots of Rocha and what look to be olivercyyu’s friends are a series of supers:
“What we think of modelling”
“Being a good role model”
“Can be a wacky way of expressing yourself”
“MODELS EAT!!!!!!”
“Doesn’t mean being SKINNY!”
“Modeling is for all races”
“COCO ROCHA, WE LOVE YOU!!!!!!”
“You are a great role model :)”
Well, they can dream.
And with the media and retail foundations of the fashion industry rattling in the wake of the world economy tailspin, it will be interesting to see just how many marketers are listening to them.
