Illionaire's Ben Woodcock busted on drugs charges, skips the country?

illionaire SS0910. stefan gosatti/getty via zimbio

He called his label Illionaire but it seems co-founder Ben Woodcock may have been too impatient to wait to turn seven figures via a legitimate fashion business. According to The West Australian, on August 19 Woodock was charged with possession of methylamphetamines with intent to sell or supply after being pulled over while driving his mum’s BMW with A$780,000 worth of drugs allegedly stashed in his underpants. And it gets worse. Woodcock failed to appear in court yesterday, is alleged to have fled the country and now has Interpol on his back. Way to go. Needless to say if Woodcock were to be busted with drugs in any number of countries surrounding Australia he could be facing a far worse prospect than a little jail time downunder. Woodcock launched Illionaire in Perth in 2006 with Kat Grace.

Catherine McNeil shoots a heroine cover for Numéro

models.com

There might be a question mark over Sarah Stephens' exact involvement with the September Vogue Italia, but another Chic Management brunette definitely has a new page one under her belt. Catherine McNeil graces the cover of issue #105 of influential French magazine Numéro - with her brows either bleached or airbrushed to achieve fashion's increasingly popular no-brows look (the subject of a story in today's New York Times). Shot by Greg Kadel and styled by Franck Benhamou, the cover is of course another great get for McNeil who, in just two years, has risen to the world number eight position on models.com's Top 50 working models ranking. The Numéro cover emerges at the same time as McNeil's spectacular Patrick Demarchelier editorial in the August edition of German Vogue. However frockwriter can't help thinking just how cynical Numéro's "héroine" double entendre coverline is - not to mention models.com's "Heroine addict" headline on its blog entry overnight. Drugs have always been a problem in the modelling business. Earlier this week, veteran Australian model Emma Balfour slammed the fashion enablers of the 1990s "heroin chic" look for being "f***ing irresponsible". But the 40 year-old mother of two has been out of the business for some time. With last October's death of 20 year-old American model Randy Johnston and that of 27 year-old American artist and occasional model Dash Snow just four days ago - both from heroin overdoses - you have to wonder how big the current heroin problem in New York's fashion and art scene might be.

"F***ing irresponsible" - Emma Balfour weighs in on fashion's heroin chic enablers

priscillas

Frockwriter told you about Emma Balfour’s runway comeback in September at Marc Jacobs and Alexander Wang. Her appearances at RAFW in May. And her Bondi backyard. So it was with some interest that we spotted her throwing down in this interview from Sunday's The Sun Herald which has just gone online. Balfour dismisses vogue.com.au’s recent glib portrayal of her as “the face of heroin chic in the 1990s” as "boring", before telling the paper, “You know, there were girls who were junkies. And they were being propped up, and people loved their out-of-it, glazed-over thing that was happening, and it was just f---in' irresponsible. People used to find it hilarious because I was the only girl who had never tried cocaine, let alone anything else. It ... didn't apply to me. But I was thin and overworked. I know lots of people who, when they get busy, just drop weight and that's just what I was like, for more natural reasons than having a heroin habit." In handing the smack chic crown to Balfour, vogue.com.au overlooked several other '90s "superwaifs", notably Kate Moss - who, of course, is no stranger to cocaine. Balfour says that Moss has “always been quite emotionally fragile and I don't think she's been really looked after well enough, especially by herself." As for Balfour's return to the business at the age of 40, she notes: "Once the economy goes down, you need to do as many different demographics as you can and bring the old birds in who people are familiar with."

Things not going better with coke in Paris - especially at Elite

satirical sisley advertisement via adsneeze *

Well it seems the fashion action isn’t isolated to the runways this week in Paris. French police have launched a strike force to crack down on drug use in the Paris fashion, nightclub and film scene. The first high profile deer caught in their headlights is none other than Bertrand Hennet, the ceo of Elite Model Management parent Elite World, who has been charged with buying, possessing and transporting cocaine. Released on bail, Hennet revealed to investigators that he snorts up to two mgs of cocaine every day. And possibly also dobbed in others, in exchange for a better deal. According to the UK Telegraph, a number of others are being questioned - including other "high-profile" figures.

Hilariously, Elite Model Management president, Gerald Marie, dismissed the arrest as an "epiphenomenon", claiming that although he is "surprised" by the incident, Hennet is not involved in the day-to-day running of the agency.

Oh yes, that's right, Hennet only heads up Elite's high profile international scouting event, the Elite Model Look contest, which involves a large number of young teenage hopefuls.

A spokesman for Elite World is quoted as saying that the Hennet debacle, “is an isolated case."

Well, isolated to this decade, is what he meant to say presumably.

In 1999, Elite Model Management - then the world's biggest model agency (a title that has since been usurped by IMG Models) - found itself at the epicentre of the modelling industry’s biggest scandal, after a current affairs team from the BBC led by Donal MacIntyre conducted an undercover investigation into the Milan modelling scene.

The exposé, which sent shockwaves through the industry, revealed that girls as young as 13 were being pressured into sex and drugs by those in trust, with one model booker from the Marilyn agency admitting that she supplied cocaine to models.

The actions of the Elite agency were particularly damaging.

Elite executives were overheard calling black models "niggers" and making racist jokes, whilst Gerald Marie, who was at the time the president of Elite Europe, propositioned an undercover female reporter who was posing as a model – and boasted on camera that he planned to seduce the Elite Model Look finalists, whose average age was 15.

Needless to say, many may well be surprised to hear that Marie even still has a job at Elite, let alone a senior position at the company - having stepped down in disgrace in the wake of the 1999 scandal.

The news follows almost a year to the day that the head of the UN's Office on Drugs and Crime, Antonio Maria Costa, slammed "coke- snorting fashionistas" such as Amy Winehouse, Kate Moss and Pete Doherty, for glamorising drug use.

All three celebrities have strong connections to the fashion industry in the various capacities of paid model, booked entertainer and/or designer muse.

Needless to say, it promises to be a fun week.

Elite Model Management was founded by John Casablancas in Paris in 1972.

Casablancas described the BBC's 1999 revelations as "some of the darkest aspects" of modelling and promised an investigation within the company, telling The Independent:

"Four members of the Elite organisation appear in this programme. The language and situations in which these individuals allowed themselves to be involved are shocking, unacceptable and highly inappropriate".

Coincidentally, Casablancas sold his interest in the agency in 2000.

In 2002, Casablancas found himself at the centre of his own underage sex scandal, when a former Elite model claimed that she had been pursued by Casablancas at the Elite Model Look competition when she was 15, that Casablancas had made her pregnant and then took her to a doctor for an abortion.




* Although the above "Sisley" ad initially swept across the net in 2007, prompting heated debate, Sisley parent Benetton has clarified that the company had nothing whatsoever to do with the images. Sisley has nevertheless been more than happy to push the taste envelope with its advertisements, as shot by Terry Richardson and including the famous shot of model Josie Moran simulating fellatio with a cow's udder. And frankly, it's hardly surprising that people found it so easy to believe that this was a real Sisley ad. In the interests of satire and free speech, frockwriter reserves the right to republish the above picture as social commentary on the fashion business. Sisley can hardly claim that its, ahem, nose, is clean.