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.

The great Gatenby - Menswear Spring/Summer 2014

james gatenby walks fendi SS14 via style.com

The Spring/Summer 2014 menswear shows are underway in Milan, with the second London Collections: Men and Pitti Uomo events just wrapped in London and Florence, respectively. The season's Paris leg starts on Wednesday. By frockwriter’s count 11 Australian men walked the Fall/Winter 2013/2014 runways in February and March this year, including several new faces such as Nathaniel Visser, Elijah Tyedmers, Saint Laurent fave Reuben Ramacher and of course James Gatenby, the Sydney Uni science major who made his international debut opening Louis Vuitton as an exclusive. So far this season, we have spotted eight ten twelve thirteen. Not to mention one Kiwi woman - frockwriter fave Holly Rose Emery, on no less than Prada's runway, in one of a handful of women's Resort 2014 looks that were thrown into the show.

'Still' by Michele Aboud at Black Eye Gallery

eloise by michele aboud

Michele Aboud is one of Australia’s most respected photographers, whose work has featured in 13 exhibitions from Toronto to Sydney. On June 12^th she will unveil her 14^th show - ‘Still’ at the Black Eye gallery in Darlinghurst, Sydney. Here is an exclusive preview.

Hanne Gaby Odiele for JASU

Hanne Gaby Odiele made a whistle stop tour of Sydney for last month's Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week Australia, walking exclusively for Kym Ellery's show. The top Belgian model - who is ranked world number 34 by models.com - also shot this Australian autumn/winter 2013 lookbook campaign for the event's e-tail partner JASU. JASU specialises in Australian designers and live streamed all of MBFWA's on-site shows. Here's a first look. 

New faces: Rui Dalton

thom kerr

Holly Rose Emery and Andrej Pejic are not the only intriguing models to hail, respectively, from The Land of The Long White Cloud and the Balkans. Meet 17 year-old surfer/skater/base jumper Rui Dalton. 

Holly Rose Emery for A.D. by Haryono Setiadi

Holly Rose Emery is on a roll. The 16 year-old Aucklander who has been modelling for just one year (and who we first wrote about last August), cleaned up at last month's Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week Australia, walking in 20 shows - putting her at the very top of the list of the week's top showgirls. With Dion Lee and Toni Maticevski lookbooks and the latest cover of Vogue Australia's youth-nosed online zine Miss Vogue also under her belt, Emery is due to head to New York in June to try her luck at the Resort 2014 shows. Repped in Australia by Chic Management and just signed by Chic's New York affiliate Next Models, we hear there is quite some international interest. Here is an exclusive preview of some of her other new Australian work: campaign images for the A.D. diffusion line of up-and-coming Sydney-based Indonesian-Australian designer Haryono Setiadi. 

The faces of Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week Australia SS 13/14

holly rose emery backstage at flannel SS1314

Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week Australia is done and dusted for another year. Who were the top showgirls - and guys? Frockwriter asked all the major Sydney booking agencies for their top models at the event and here is the result. Yes there were a couple of high profile ring ins who flew in for show exclusives - Georgia May Jagger for Camilla and Hanne Gaby Odiele for Ellery. The list of 41 names, below, includes four other internationals (Solveig Hansen, Juliette Fazekas, Alanna Whittaker and Isabelle Sauer). Interestingly, however, the list is dominated by a plethora of new local faces who have never previously appeared at the event. Some recently profiled by frockwriter, notably Kiwi Holly Rose Emery, April Tiplady and Gabby Dover. Great to see some of Australia's biggest international runway names back in town supporting the local industry and it was no surprise at all to find Nicole Pollard, Julia Nobis and Ruby Jean Wilson at the top of the list. What is perhaps surprising is to see a newcomer such as Emery also at the very top of the list, ranked by her show numbers (not including off-schedule shows from the week before). 

Abbey Lee Kershaw - shoe drama queen

lanvin SS11 via style.com

Budding actor and soon-to-be-co-star of Mad Max: Fury Road Abbey Lee Kershaw has been taking a year-long sabbatical from the modelling world, but is about to re-emerge on the fashion stage according to her finance broker father Kim Kershaw - who is now, amusingly, also acting as her 'mother' agent in Australia. Earlier this year, Abbey Lee ditched Chic Management due to what we have on good authority was a dispute over Chic's 'mother agency' fee. That's the fee (generally 10-15percent) that a model's home market agent pockets on all future earnings in all markets, on top of booking agents fees. But Abbey Lee has not been far from the thoughts of her fans. Case in point, some behind-the-scenes footage that has just surfaced from the Lanvin Spring/Summer 2011 runway show in Paris, shot all the way back in October 2010. Kershaw's fans over at The Fashion Spot have reportedly been agog over one scene showing Kershaw in tears following a dressing down by Lanvin creative director Alber Elbaz, after he observed what he describes as her "almost drunk" walk during a show rehearsal, wearing a perilous pair of Lanvin stilettos. The footage is from the Spring/Summer 2011 edition of the bi-annual French Habillé (e) s Pour documentary series by Loïc Prigent and Agnès Boulard. Originally broadcast in France in November 2010, it seems the episode recently screened on the Cinémoi North American cable channel, with the Lanvin excerpt subsequently uploaded to Vimeo by a fan. 

Frockwriter Live at MBFWA...and Frockwriter heads to Fellt

backstage at christopher esber SS1213/MBFWA

It’s that time of the year when we gather around the campfire that is Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week Australia and celebrate – or eviscerate – fashion design from the land down under. Since this journalist’s blogging career kicked off with live coverage of the event back in 2006 at smh.com.au and we have experimented with a number of different live coverage formats in the interim (e.g. last year's Fashion Week Uncut live blog, in tandem with Emma Ashton), it’s also the time of year when we usually try to come up with a fresh format for real-time coverage. Because that's just how we roll. This year it’s a newlook Frockwriter Live, the site we launched back in 2010 through the Posterous microblogging platform. Since Posterous is due to close at the end of April (sad face), we needed to find an alternative and this is it – for the moment. The newlook Frockwriter Live was developed with Johan Bergström and Daniel Kjellsson, aka Sydney Stockholm. Which brings me to the bigger picture Frockwriter news here: yes, we are hooking up with the Swedish house mafia. 

Camilla Franks channels her inner Pachamama - MBFWA SS 13/14

Australians, we love us some colour. No kidding in the case of Camilla “kaftan queen” Franks. If the Great Barrier Reef suddenly rose from the depths of the Pacific Ocean, took on human form and headed out for dinner at Nautilus in Port Douglas, hands down it would be robed in her psychedelic resort wear, which has become a fave of Oprah, Beyoncé and Lily Allen, not to mention ram raiders. On Wednesday, Franks will unveil her “Pachamama” Spring/Summer 2013/2014 collection of womenswear, menswear, childrens wear and swimwear in Centennial Park, apparently the first fashion show to ever be staged inside the park, all part of its 125th birthday celebrations this year. The collection is named after the Pachamama goddess who is revered by indigenous tribes of the Andes and Franks has scored some rock royalty for opening honours - Georgia May Jagger, who will lead a pack of 30 models in a big budget production produced by Mark Vassallo. Justin Ridler recently shot a lookbook of the collection, which was inspired by Franks’ recent trip to South America. The setting for the shoot was Sydney's Royal Botanic Gardens and the model, rising Kiwi modelling star Holly Rose Emery. Here is an exclusive preview.