Behemoth rocks

Coupla shots of the fans at last night's Behemoth concert in Sydney. Frockwriter has talked about Norwegian black metal and its influence on fashion. Well Behemoth hail from Poland and fit into a sub-sub metal genre called blackened death metal. They rocked the full corpse paint and came out for their encore in masks - made by Zenon Darski, the metalsmith dad of lead singer, Adam "Nergal" Darski - which was pretty impressive.

And while the band's Satanic stage antics might strike the fear of God into some, it's worth bearing in mind that off-stage, Darski is engaged to the Polish pop singer Dorota Rabczewska, whose oeuvre includes the albums Diamond Bitch and Bimbo. So he can't be all that scary.

That's Nergal in action in the last, fabulous Bluralist shot by Kent Vaughan (Mr Frockwriter) - which bears some resemblance to Edvard Munch's famous painting The Scream.

New girl alert: Sarah Lorimer

We first saw Sarah Lorimer at Leona Edmiston's Spring/Summer 2010/2011 presentation in Sydney on Thursday. Well here she is again in a few more dresses from the collection, as booked by Edmiston for her SS1011 lookbook that will be dispatched next week. The fresh-faced 18 year-old, who is repped by Chadwicks in Sydney, has been modelling fulltime since the beginning of the year. She will be one of the agency's hot new faces at RAFW next month and in July will be heading off to try her luck in Europe. Frockwriter thinks she has a great look: a little Miranda Kerr, alotta Heather Graham.

Cruise control

Glorious day in Sydney and what a way to spend it - or at least an hour or so - down at the Overseas Passenger Terminal on Sydney Harbour. FYI international readers, this is where luxury cruise liners berth while in town. And while once a daggy, quasi-industrial zone, the area has been revamped with a series of chic restaurants and bars. It also happens to be the venue of Rosemount Australian Fashion Week, which kicks off in three weeks time, so it felt like we had all arrived a tad early. We were there to toast Leona Edmiston's Spring/Summer 2010/2011 season launch.

Three models, nine looks... Edmiston might not be joining in RAFW's 15th anniversary festivities, but she did do a fantastic job of launching the season at Quay restaurant with a charming capsule collection of fifties sundresses featuring retro prints and glamorous draped jersey eveningwear.

All accessories by Edmiston, with some spectacular millinery by Nerida Winter, makeup by MAC's Nicole Thompson and hair by Michael Brennan.

The three models were Chic Management's Hermione Cahill (top) and Chadwicks' Sarah Lorimer (third photo, L) and Bronx Whitehorn (pic 11 - with the blue and white turban).

I covered it live on Twitter, but here is a selection of other shots I snapped in and around the venue, before having to dash back to work.

Bring on RAFW.

Malcolm McLaren was not the first British record producer to die from mesothelioma

Getty via mirror.co.uk

Pop legend Malcolm McLaren died on Thursday from mesothelioma, a rare form of lung cancer that is almost exclusively caused by exposure to asbestos fibres. To date noone has released any information indicating how McLaren may have been exposed (update 11/4: one theory is that he may have been exposed whilst refitting his King's Road shop SEX in the early '70s). But you have to wonder what, if any, role asbestos soundproofing in older recording studios might have played. One asbestos-specialist legal firm suggests it's not beyond the realm of possibility. Interestingly, McLaren is the second British music producer, and in fact the fourth recording industry professional, to have succumbed to mesothelioma in seven years. In 2003 another British producer, Mickie Most (The Animals/Herman’s Hermits/Donovan/Susie Quatro) and American singer songwriter Warren Zevon were felled by mesothelioma, with Irish singer songwriter Christie Hennessy dying from same in 2007.

Death of a pop culture genius

Sad news about the death, at age 64, of Malcolm McLaren, following a secret battle with cancer. Unfortunately I don't have the time to write a full obit, but suffice it to say he was one of the most influential cultural figures of the second half of the 20th century. To be sure, his sphere of influence was pop culture. But the Punk revolution of the mid-late 1970s, in the commercialisation of which McLaren played an intrinsic role, rattled the foundations of music, fashion, graphic design and publishing.

A former manager of The New York Dolls, McLaren's early 1970s efforts to relocate New York poet/musician Richard Hell to London proved unsuccessful. McLaren engineered Johnny Rotten and Sid Vicious instead, with Hell's spiked hair and ripped T-shirts providing what many believe was the inspiration for The Sex Pistols styling.

McLaren's (many) other music ventures included Bow Wow Wow and Adam and the Ants. And of course, he collaborated with Vivienne Westwood, his erstwhile business and life partner, with whom he also had a son, Joe Corre (co-founder of Agent Provocateur).

In this journalist's opinion, Westwood's collections were at their most subversive during the Westwood-McLaren collaboration years. Together they rocked London's Kings Road with their controversial boutiques, whose names changed from Let It Rock to Too Fast to Live Too Young to Die, Sex, Seditionaries and World's End. People were arrested for wearing Seditionaries T-shirts. It's hard to imagine today.

But the seeds for McLaren's brand of subversion had been sewn over a decade earlier, while he was an art student in London, against the backdrop of the May 1968 student riots in France. The riots themselves were rooted in the 1950s political/art movement Situationist International, of which McLaren became a disciple.

Above is an interview he did with Australia's Enough Rope program on the ABC on 10th July 2006.

Four months before that, I spoke to him backstage at Paris Fashion Week. We chatted about a number of things and I will endeavor to track down the original interview. One grab from it appeared at the end of this news story.

On the subject of artists, he told me:

"Artists have to always, always stand up and say, 'I'm not for sale' - meaning that your heart, your mindset, your artistic vision is not for sale. If that's for sale, then you're just a goddam wristwatch."

Garance Doré and Scott Schuman head back to Australia

jean-philippe delhomme via oftenenamorado

Well it's not quiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiite the same as sitting front row on the OS show circuit, but last year's power blogger frow could almost be about to reassemble in Sydney. Well, with the exception of Bryanboy, who sadly can't make it down. We already know that Canada's Tommy Ton is heading down to next month's Rosemount Australian Fashion Week. Ditto Susie Bubble, who has claimed that she would have been part of Dolce e Gabbana's new media publicity stunt in September, had she not had to return to London. Well frockwriter can reveal that French street style photographer/illustrator/blogger Garance Doré is coming to Australia at the end of April and, according to well-placed sources, intends to stay on for RAFW.

Commissioned by Westfield to create a series of illustrations of Australian designers, Doré will unveil the drawings at launches in Sydney and Melbourne. Doré's partner Scott Schuman, aka The Sartorialist, is expected to accompany her.

If all goes to plan, this will make the second consecutive RAFW for the First Couple of fashion blogging, after Schuman was brought down to the event by Tourism Australia last year and Doré accompanied him.

Louise van de Vorst has stalkers

Or so she told frockwriter at Fitzroy, Melbourne resto Cutler & Co on March 14th, on the occasion of the Calvin Klein Collection dinner, immediately following the launch of the L'Oréal Melbourne Fashion Festival. Our tablemate for the duration, van de Vorst mentioned the challenges inherent in living with one of Australia's best-known musos (Silverchair's Daniel Johns). We won't go into the details, but suffice it to say, Johns has a lot of ardent fans. Although dressed for the evening in Calvin Klein Collection, the Chic Management model, fluent Dutch speaker, Gemma Ward doppelgänger and aspiring fashion designer is apparently more at home in her own label, which is due to be unveiled in one Sydney boutique in the next couple of months. Why hasn't she tried to infiltrate the OS runway season? No particular reason, she explained, before adding that she might have a crack next season. We have a hunch she would be a hit.

Julia Nobis has big feet

Yes we know she has a huge future ahead of her. A Calvin Klein exclusive at New York Fashion Week will do that for you. But apparently Australia's hottest new modelling face, Julia Nobis, also has rather large feet - US size 11 according to her Sydney mother agency Priscillas (or a US size 12 according to other sources, with some suggestion her shoe size might have precluded her being cast in some FW1011 shows). So big, that Calvin Klein was obliged to make up some custom fit shoes for her to wear for its February 18th show, according to Calvin Klein. Above is a shot of Nobis' dress rack, from backstage footage filmed by Today Tonight, showing her two changes of footwear for the show.

Death of an Australian fashion icon

bettman/corbis

Sonia McMahon only spent one year as Australia’s First Lady. Nevertheless, she goes down in history as the Australian political spouse with the greatest international fashion resonance and the engineer of one of this country's most iconic fashion moments. Part Princess Diana, part Bond Girl, one can only imagine the impact that the thirty nine year-old mother of three must have had on February 3 1971 when she emerged in “That Dress” at a state dinner at the White House, totally overshadowing Australia’s 20th prime minister and, presumably, the rest of the night’s proceedings. "My God, who is that?" Richard Nixon is reported to have spluttered, before noting – some three months after signing off on a covert investigations unit designed to put the kibosh on intel leaks to the news media - "I'll have her at my side. I'll have my photo in every paper in the US”.

McMahon got to wear the dress one more time in the US – thirty four years later in Los Angeles, this time on the arm of her son Julian at the Golden Globes. It was in fact a modified Jonathan Ward replica, created for Myer’s 100 years of Australian fashion retrospective.

The original dress, which is now housed inside Sydney’s Powerhouse Museum, was created by Spanish designer Victoria Cascajo, who owned a South Yarra boutique called Balencia Couture.

Cascajo worked for legendary Spanish-born couturier Cristobal Balenciaga for 10 years in Madrid (Balenciaga originally opened in Spain in 1919, before moving to Paris in 1937 following the Spanish Civil War). Upon his retirement in May 1968, Cascajo told The Age that Balenciaga taught her everything she knows.

The thigh-high split and cutout detailing under the arms and on the sleeves, however, were far more in sync with the far younger Paris guns Pierre Cardin and André Courrèges, as well Austrian-born American Rudi Gernreich. Against the backdrop of the Mod fashion revolution of Swinging 60s London, their “space age” styles influenced a generation of fashion designers the world over – including, undoubtedly, Perth’s Ruth Tarvydas, who has claimed Cascajo copied her best-selling buckle dress of 1969.

In September, Tarvydas told The Australian:

"I think her dressmaker was definitely inspired by my dress, it was obvious. (Sonia McMahon) really was the first Rebecca Twigley, she just happened to be in the White House."

A reporter for The Washington Post is said to have described McMahon's gown at the time as:

"absolutely smashing. I think the dress is a breakthrough for fashion and a blow for women's liberation."

It was, at the very least, courageous.

Vale Sonia McMahon.

Today Tonight goes backstage at Calvin Klein

This story went to air on tonight's show. With Calvin Klein Collection womenswear director Francisco Costa and executive vice president global communications Malcolm Carfrae both due to speak at last month's L'Oréal Melbourne Fashion Festival, it seemed like the perfect opportunity to show both in context in New York. After quite some negotiation, a freelance New York crew was booked and they shot at the February 18th shows (Calvin Klein has two, back-to-back - one for press, the other buyers). New York Fashion Week regulars would be aware that although the backstage areas at many shows are often crawling with camera crews, a couple of shows tend to be like Fort Knox. Calvin Klein arguably at the top of that list. I did the master interviews in Melbourne, just prior to the LMFF launch. Sadly the story did not get to run in the LMFF leadup.

I had no idea that Julia Nobis was even in the show until after it finished, otherwise I would have asked the crew to talk to her. And FYI "Yag-a-chiak" is the correct pronunciation of Jac's surname. I checked with Australia's Polish Chamber of Commerce.

I produced/wrote the story. Sally Obermeder reported and Damian Moncrieff edited.

Just a word on the intro and plasma screen graphics.

Producers are required to provide a sample intro for the anchor to read prior to each story, which is often tweaked further up the line.

Mine did mention all the Australian connections, ie in PR, the models and also the celebrities (Naomi Watts and Isobel Lucas were in the front row at the first show, with Melissa George turning up at the afterparty). Somehow, by the time the intro got to air, it had managed to morph into "Australian chiefs" being the "driving force" behind the company.

Unless Calvin Klein Inc president Tom Murry happens to have some antipodian ancestry, this will of course be news to Phillips Van Heusen.

But look, any more Australians on board and there could be a takeover.