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. 

If the shoe fits

andrej pejic models chris benz SS12 via sight management studio

We all talk – a great deal – about the sizes of the bodies of fashion models. The sizes of their feet, however, rarely come up for discussion. What an interesting topic of conversation it proved to be when we puffed this week's Anmari Botha post on both frockwriter’s and my personal Facebook pages, using one of Botha’s IMG Models showcards as an illustration – and her published shoe size, "7.5", sparked a raft of comments. “How does a 5’11” woman have such small feet?!” asked Sydney-based media trainer Shauna Stafford. Another noted, “Most women that size would have size nine or ten feet”. While a former magazine maven chimed in, “Your basic nightmare. Perfect” – referring, we assume, to the dearth of “unusual” shoe sizes in the fashion cupboard of a typical magazine.

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.