MBFWA's top showgirls

Julia Nobis owned the runways of last year's Australian Fashion Week. Nobis had far bigger fashion fish to fry this year in the northern hemisphere, leaving the Australian Spring/Summer 2012/2013 field earlier this month wide open to the score of Australians rising up behind her. Last month, frockwriter published the MBFWA showcards of Australia's major model agencies; in each case a mix of runway veterans and promising new faces. So who had the busiest schedules at this year's event? We asked the agencies to name their top showgirls. 

Scarf ace - the rise and rise of the hijabista

anoujoum's facebook

Perth’s Zoe Loveland has graced the covers of Frankie, Summer Winter and Karen magazines. Now she is about to add something a little different to her repertoire. In June, Loveland - who is not a Muslim - will become the very first model to be featured on the cover of an Australian magazine wearing a hijab. That's according to Anoujoum, which bills itself as Australia's only English-Arabic magazine and which chose Loveland for the cover of its June 'Modesty' issue. 

Armani dives into social media with Armani Tweet Talks

giorgio armani by andy warhol via interview magazine

Better late than never. The Armani Group has just announced an interesting new social media initiative: a series of moderated live fashion discussions with hand-picked panels of industry notables, to be published on Twitter. Called Armani Tweet Talks, the first will take place on June 1st as part of the One Night Only in Beijing event and the focus of the discussion will be the growing importance of China. The inaugural panel will consist of: moderator Peter Howarth, who is described on the release as an "editor and author"; Angelina Cheung, editor in chief of Vogue China; Hung Huang, "publisher, blogger, tv commentator and tastemaker" (who is elsewhere described as “China’s Oprah”); fashion journalist Godfrey Deeny; Yoox founder and ceo Federico Marchetti and bloggers Susanna Lau aka Susie Bubble and Tommy Ton from jakandjil.com. There is, naturally, a hashtag: #ArmaniTeetTalks and if you want to view the discussion in a live chat forum, the company has created a dedicated live space: ArmaniTweetTalks. You can also ask the panel questions – starting now. The release describes Armani Tweet Talks as "a truly pioneering initiative". We're inclined to agree. 

Ksubi paid its MBFWA models in cash - with a 'trade' bonus

nicole pollard backstage at ksubi SS1213

Couldn’t help noticing a tweet from top Australian model Melissa Johannsen this morning, thanking Ksubi for a AUD 500 gift voucher which had just arrived. “Oh yea! thanks @Ksubi...such an awesome show!” read the accompanying caption on Johannsen’s Instagram shot of the voucher (below). Knowing how endemic the practice of payment “in trade” has become in the modelling business - i.e. designers offering clothes and accessories instead of cash - we assumed the voucher might have been Johannsen’s fee for the Ksubi show at Mercedes-Benz Australian Fashion Week on April 30th. Not so, responded Johannsen, who told us that she never works for trade – at least not in Australia.

The Great Gatsby - the trailer

atthecinema.net

Five months after the release of the first official stills from Baz Lurhmann's latest extravaganza The Great Gatsby - a US$127million 3D adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald's jazz age classic - comes the first trailer (below). Shot in Sydney at Fox Studios, the film stars Leonardo di Caprio, Carey Mulligan and Tobey Maguire, alongside a swag of Aussies, from Joel Edgerton to Isla Fisher, Vince Colosimo, Barry Otto, Max Cullen and model-turned-thesp Gemma Ward. The countdown to the Christmas release is now on. 

Skeleton key

File this under impromptu frockwriter styling. During Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week Australia earlier this month, we were shooting backstage at the menswear group show and couldn't help but do a double take as we walked past Jesus lookalike model Butch Dean being kitted out in a rather spectacular piece of body jewellery. A stainless steel exoskeleton to be precise, or so we christened it, designed by Perth jeweller Alister Yiap and deployed by another Perth-ite, Zsadar designer Shane Newton, to spruce up Newton's segment of the show. We took a shot of Dean - but not before asking for the piece to be turned around backwards, so as to best highlight the design, which is far more discreet from the front (both versions, below). Posted simultaneously on frockwriter LIVE, frockwriter's Facebook and our pop-up MBFWA live blog UNCUT, the shot proved the most popular of all the images we took at MBFWA. Among its fans was Michael Christofis - the Sydney-based designer behind mens' swim- and underwear brand The Navy Diver. So enamoured was Christofis of Yiap's creation, he immediately contacted Yiap and has since used the piece in every single shot of a new promotional series for The Navy Diver starring model Benjamin Gellie. And yes, it's worn backwards.

A salute to Kirstie Clements

vogue.com.au

The Australian fashion industry had a reality check yesterday, with the announcement that Kirstie Clements had been unceremoniously dethroned as editor of Vogue Australia. Unceremoniously is putting it kindly. According to The Sydney Morning Herald, Clements - up until yesterday the second longest-serving editor of the current Australian mainstream fashion magazine pack after Marie Claire's Jackie Frank - was escorted from the premises by security, with her phone confiscated [update 19/05: although Clements made no effort on Thursday or Friday on Twitter to correct this version of events - which we understand were witnessed by third parties - she has since denied to the SMH that her phone was confiscated or that she was escorted from the building]. The axing of two other senior NewsLifeMedia editorial executives at the same moment might have helped assuage the humiliation. This was business, after all, for News Limited, nothing personal. Given the accompanying press release, it was pretty clear that new News Limited ceo Kim Williams and his axe-woman, new NewsLifeMedia ceo Nicole Sheffield, had no idea just how personal a matter it would have been for Clements. They stated she had been Vogue's editor for 10 years, out of a total 13 years with the magazine. In fact, Clements was Vogue's editor for 13 years - but she originally joined the title in 1985 as a receptionist, before moving up through the ranks and briefly defecting to the newly-relaunched Harper's Bazaar in 1998. Some thank-you for almost 30 years of service to one of the world's greatest publishing brands.

Andrej Pejic covers i-D

matt jones/i-D via models.com

Andrej Pejic's star continues to rise, with the publication of his 10th international magazine cover in just over a year. This time it's a pretty big deal: i-D magazine. One of seven Summer 2012 covers of the British pop culture bible, Pejic was shot by Matt Jones and co-stars with model Dree Hemingway. The other covers feature a phalanx of "It" folk, from actors Léa Seydoux and Andrew Garfield to models Arizona Muse and Agyness Dean, Julia Restoin-Roitfeld and newly-crowned Christian Dior creative director Raf Simons. Pejic joins a handful of other Australians who can claim "of the moment" status via an i-D cover: Emma Balfour, Miranda Kerr, Gemma Ward, Ajak Deng and Abbey Lee Kershaw. And i-D isn't the only magazine Pejic is fronting this month - he also appears on the May cover of New Zealand's Black. With his Jean Paul Gaultier Kokorico fragrance campaign due to bow soon, stand by to see what else might be in the pipeline. Here is a gallery of his recent covers:

Three minutes with Angus Low

A score of models passed through Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week Australia last week in Sydney - and in front of our camera, for our live coverage of the event on the Fashion Week UNCUT live blog. It was great to finally meet one in particular: Angus Low, who we have profiled several times in recent months. We first met Low at Toni Maticevski's off-schedule presentation the week before MBFWA (above). He had been cast alongside one other male model to perch shirtless on the podium under Maticevski's couture-clad glamazons. Then last week Low appeared in Song For The Mute's menswear show, his only MBFWA gig before heading off for other bookings. We had a quick chat as he was walking out the door.