Her name is Lola. She was a showgirl

Kia Ora from sunny/rainy/sunny/rainy Auckland, where frockwriter is, once again, the guest of the organisers of New Zealand Fashion Week. Due to other commitments, we only touched down yesterday so missed some early shows. Beyond the event's spectacular new digs at the newly-unveiled Viaduct Events Centre, what has struck us so far is the fact that while it's not at all unusual to see Oz models on NZ runways, on this occasion, they seem a little more prominent than usual. To wit, Krystal Glynn, the face of Zambesi's Spring/Summer 2011/2012 campaign and also the covergirl of New Zealand Fashion Week's official 2011 handbook (bottom). Glynn is already en route to New York so won't be attending. Another Aussie will be opening tonight's Zambesi show - Lola Van Vorst. The name sounds familiar? A contestant on Australia's Next Top Model Cycle 5, Van Vorst has barely done any modelling in the interim, moving instead behind the camera as a photographer. But she suddenly finds herself much in demand in front of the lens. 

Cassi van den Dungen takes one step back from her model dream

IMG

Are you ready for the next installment of the Cassi van den Dungen rollercoaster? Sadly this one ends with her 33,000 feet somewhere above Central Asia on a plane en route to Australia. Yes as frockwriter types, van den Dungen is winging her way back downunder, having failed to book a single show at Paris Fashion Week. No interest? Nothing could be further from the truth. Frockwriter can reveal that she was heading to Paris Fashion Week on option for an exclusive. Indeed a tremendously prestigious Paris Fashion Week exclusive which, if secured, would have undoubtedly launched her international career. She didn't get it. Even after three meetings with the design house and casting director. Now anyone who knows anything about the modelling business knows that this could have happened to any girl. There is however a little more to this back story, so buckle up.

Cassi van den Dungen - two steps closer to her model dream

camerons via TO2W


OK so where were we on the Tahnee Atkinson/Cassi van den Dungen/Australia's Next Top Model roundabout? Atkinson has just shot the Curvy jeans campaign for Bettina Liano. After losing the Cycle 5 ANTM crown to Atkinson and flipping the bird to the show by turning down contracts with Priscillas and Elite New York, van den Dungen, meanwhile, signed with her childhood modelling agency, Tanya Powell, in Melbourne, then also with Work Agency in Sydney, before shooting lookbooks for Portmans and getting bullied by ANTM’s Charlotte Dawson and Alex Perry. Coupla interesting updates. Apart from currently being plastered all over Portmans front windows, van den Dungen has finally ditched Tanya Powell for Camerons, a boutique - but nevertheless far more serious-looking - Melbourne agency. Most interesting of all: she has just been featured on The Ones To Watch, models.com’s emerging talent satellite site.

In a profile on December 1, TO2W noted:

“Cassi is sensational – her features, her height and her personality all combine to make one super model who is creating interest all over the world. With building a strong book her priority right now, expect to see Cassi on the global fashion scene by mid-2010”.

Fascinating contrast to the prediction by ANTM model mentor Charlotte Dawson, who told her Facebook friends back in July:

“I think Cassi's only going to end up being the poster girl for Sunbury Centrelink”.

Meanwhile, although Tahnee Atkinson reports that she was recently told in New York that she would need to lose weight in order to work in that market (with Atkinson telling Today Tonight last week, "But I'm prepared to do that to go to New York"), van den Dungen told News Ltd that one of the reasons she rejected the Priscillas/Elite contracts was out of concern that she would need to lose weight to work internationally. Which NL duly whipped up into the headline:

"Australia's Next Top Model's Cassi van den Dungen rejected New York deal over weight issues"


Without having set foot beyond Sydney however, she is looking rather thin in this new set of test shots.

First look at Tahnee Atkinson in Bettina Liano's new Curvy jean on TT

Two weeks ago frockwriter revealed that Bettina Liano was about to launch a more amply-cut jean - notably up to a size 16 - and that she had booked Australia's Next Top Model Cycle 5 winner Tahnee Atkinson to promote it. Pierre Toussaint shot the new campaign on Monday and Today Tonight was there. The story went to air last night. I produced/wrote, Sally Obermeder is the reporter, Ray Munro edited.

Bettina Liano launches the Curvy jean - taps Tahnee Atkinson to front it

priscillas

Bettina Liano, Australia’s original jean queen, is the latest Oz designer to pay hip service to the larger sizes issue. Frockwriter can reveal that Liano will launch a new jean line called Curvy next month. Aimed at the more curvaceous woman, it consists at the moment of two jeans: a new style called Curvy and a "curvy" adaptation of Liano’s classic True Bootleg style. Curvy is a straight leg, mid-rise jean in a vintage wash. Both styles are cut to allow more room around the bottom and thighs and will be available in sizes 8-16. According to a Bettina Liano spokeswoman, Liano's jeans usually go up to a size 12 (even though Liano’s website indicates they may reach 14). To kick off the launch, Pierre Toussaint will shoot new campaign images in Sydney on November 30, with Australia’s Next Top Model Cycle 5 winner Tahnee Atkinson.

This is interesting for several reasons.

Firstly, the ongoing controversy over the dearth of designer clothing in larger sizes.

Not that 16 is by any means tapping into the plus size market. But as Melbourne blogger Hayley Hughes and I recently discovered when we took two hidden cameras into Chapel Street to shoot a story for Australian current affairs television program Today Tonight on how the fashion industry discriminates against larger sizes, it was extremely difficult finding anything on Chapel Street over a size 12. For someone who writes about the industry, this even surprised me. Brisbane blogger Nicholas Perkins also took part.

Click here to see the Today Tonight story.

Secondly, as we know, this year’s ANTM placed quite some focus on the body image issue and it seemed almost a fait accompli when curvy Atkinson won the competition – even though runnerup Cassie Van Den Dungen appeared to be the better-equipped of the two for an international high fashion career.

Meanwhile, Atkinson recently visited New York and some appear genuinely shocked that Atkinson was not welcomed with open arms by the New York market.

Atkinson will join the upwardly-mobile Jess Hart as a current season Bettina Liano poster girl.



PS. In the TT story, the figure of $10.5billion refers of course to the estimated fashion component of Australian clothing retail sales [source: IBISWorld]. And yes, Gossip is indeed an American, and not a British, band. As I have blogged previously. The word British inadvertently slipped into the script and I did not realise until it was too late. My apologies.

RAFW develops a Diet Coke habit

patricia field for diet coke/the budget fashionista

Well we know Karl Lagerfeld is a Diet Coke addict. According to sources now Alex Perry and nine of “Australia’s best designers” may be about to make a DC hookup as well. In further developments to the RAFW SS0910 schedule – which frockwriter has been tracking ahead of its official April 15 release – it emerges that a big bucks sponsor-driven show is in the pipeline for the event, at this stage mooted for a Tuesday night time slot (UPDATE 02/04: now confirmed for Tuesday 28th April @ 8.00pm). Contracts are still being locked in, but frockwriter hears that 10 big Australian fashion names have been approached to create three little black dresses apiece for the show, inspired by the Diet Coke bottle.

For anyone who finds the concept bizarre, just a reminder that this is the type of sponsor-driven show which is often seen at New York’s Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week – which, like RAFW, is also operated by IMG.

The most recent incarnations of these sponsor shows include the Barbie 50th anniversary celebration show, sponsored by Mattel and The Heart Truth’s Red Dress Collection, sponsored by Diet Coke - both staged at the FW0910 event in February.

America’s biggest fashion names participated in both shows and the Red Dress Collection was later auctioned for charity.

Diet Coke has also been heavily involving itself with the cream of the fashion business, having commissioned special bottle designs from names such as Patricia Field (pictured above) and Roberto Cavalli:


roberto cavalli for diet coke/catwalkqueen.tv

The Diet Coke show is one of no less than four projects via which Perry is expected to be hands-on at RAFW's SS0910 event – in spite of the fact that, as frockwriter already reported, he is not doing his own standalone runway show for the first time in AFW’s 14-year history.

Perry already presented his SS0910 show on February 26th aboard the Queen Mary, when the luxury superliner berthed in Sydney:


alex perry SS0910/getty via daylife

What else will Perry be doing at RAFW?

Filming Australia’s Next Top Model Cycle 5 girls at five RAFW shows according to Perry: Ginger & Smart, Wayne Cooper, Anna & Boy, Nicola Finetti and a New Generation show.

ANTM Cycle 5 kicks off on April 28th on Fox 8, with Sarah 'Face of Bonds' Murdoch in the host driver’s seat, following the 2008 exit, in disgrace, of incumbent host Jodhi Meares.

Filming is underway and Perry reports that the show is currently down to the last three girls.

For those who have not yet seen the campy ANTM Cycle 5 trailer, in which Murdoch flies a lippie-shaped space craft, watch it in highres on the ANTM site.

Perry will also be filming for Nine’s nightly prime time current affairs show A Current Affair.

Perry recently slipped into the role of ACA’s defacto fashion reporter, filing two stories during the Melbourne Fashion Festival and one earlier story on the David Jones 2009 collections launch.

Perry is also likely to be involved in a fourth project at the event. Yes, it does involve a show – just not a show featuring his clothes specifically.

Of the lack of a more traditional Alex Perry runway presence at the event, the designer told frockwriter:

“Look, it [Fashion Week] is what it is – do you spend $100,000 doing that or do you do other things throughout the year that are sales-driven?. If we hadn’t sold [the SS0910 collection] then we would have done it. I feel OK about it because I’m going to be doing stuff down there, it’s not like I won’t have a presence at the event. Hats off to people that are actually doing it. I’m fortunate that I don’t need to at the moment and I can sail through”.

As for Perry’s little black Diet Coke dresses, apparently we can expect at least one of them to rival the designer's infamous pubis-grazing micromini of SS0708 – which, via this journalist's second-last blog at smh.com.au, earned the nickname of "The Toukley Skirt".

Quipped Perry, “It might well be a reprise of The Toukley Skirt - more brazen than ever before”.

Snubbed by ANTM - booked by Prada and Gucci

Myf Shepherd, as shot - although not literally, we hope - by Douglas Perrett/COACD

We mentioned two weeks ago that the NY hype had already started before Myf Shepherd had even gotten on the bloody plane. But now, a fortnight in the Big Apple and she is already making model waves - christened by no less than Prada and Gucci. All the more amusing therefore to hear from Shepherd’s Sydney agent, Kathy Ward, that the 17 year-old Queenslander was, earlier this year, culled from auditions for the current season of Australia’s Next Top Model because the producers didn’t, ahem, think she had what it takes.

Scouted in January this year on the street in Newfarm, Brisbane by Alexis Elliott, head of Chic Management’s Future Faces Division, Shepherd (nee Myfanwy Amy Shepherd, but previously known as Amy Shepherd) hit the ground running at last month’s Australian Fashion Week, walking in 17 shows in her first show season - more than any other model from the same agency.

Neither Foxtel nor ANTM production company Granada Productions were at press time able to confirm or deny that Shepherd had auditioned for the series.

On November 1st 2007 however, The Gold Coast Bulletin published a story about Shepherd’s hopes for selection in Cycle 4. In the story, ANTM host Jodhi Meares is quoted as saying:

“Definitely, I will be pushing for her to go through. I think she is quite amazing”.

Evidently Meares wasn’t pushy enough.

Shepherd walked in the Prada Resort show earlier this week in New York. According to The Ones 2 Watch, she was also booked for Gucci’s “two-day” resort presentation – although it’s unclear whether this refers solely to Gucci’s lowkey New York showing to editors, or additionally the big Gucci resort runway extravaganza that is reportedly due to take place in Rome on July 8.

Shepherd’s compatriot, and fellow Chic Management fledgling, Sarah Stephens, was also booked for Gucci according to TO2W. Kathy Ward said she was unaware if either model had been retained for anything Gucci-related beyond the New York editors presentations. No news yet on options for the haute couture shows in Paris, which begin in a few weeks. But Shepherd at least heads to Paris early next week for casting sessions.

On Thursday Shepherd popped up in a cameo on the COACD blog of model hypemeister Douglas Perrett, a US casting director (picture and link above^) - and on Friday, on that of Wayne Sterling, aka The Imagist, who is a co-founder of models.com. TO2W also reports that both Shepherd and Stephens are due to appear in a new faces spread in the UK 10 Magazine; that Stephens is booked for Numero and that Shepherd is not only confirmed for the Numero Tokyo option we mentioned two weeks ago, but is also due to appear in an upcoming editorial in Exit Magazine.

And no, the latter apparently has nothing to do with Dr Philip Nitschke – even though one could be forgiven for so thinking in the wake of a comment made by leading casting director James Scully at Tuesday night’s CFDA model health chinwag in NYC:

“Let’s stop treating models like greyhounds we plan to shoot after a race”.

Original post and comments.