Vogue Australia reaches modelling nirvana via Greg Kadel

Herewith a selection of images from Greg Kadel's 28-page Come as you are editorial starring Catherine McNeil and Abbey Lee Kershaw for Vogue Australia's 50th birthday edition, including five as yet unpublished images. High profile US modelling website models.com unveiled four of the images overnight Friday and they have been travelling across the net in the interim. The only place they don't seem to have had much play over the past three days is in News Ltd's Australian newspapers, which is curious given their unfettered access to the material - while every other outlet had to wait until today. You’ll have to beg, borrow or steal a copy from Vogue Australia subscribers, who receive their issues today, to see the remaining pages. The issue hits newsstands on Wednesday.










all images: supplied by vogue australia

Catherine McNeil and Abbey Lee Kershaw steam it up for Vogue's 50th

greg kadel via models.com

In one of those frustrating moments that one encounters whilst straddling old and new media, on Thursday I was given 13 out of 28 pages of Greg Kadel's edgy 'Come as you are' spread in the upcoming September edition of Vogue Australia, which is out August 5 and celebrates the title's 50th birthday. As I tweeted before the launch, the story stars model mates Catherine McNeil and Abbey Lee Kershaw, who appear semi-nude in several shots. But while both models have disrobed for international magazines, even recently posing topless together in Terry Richardson's 2010 Pirelli calendar, you could count the number of times Vogue Australia has published arty images of bare breasts on one hand. Most likely, on several fingers. It's a beautiful editorial and one that Vogue's critics, who accuse the magazine of being staid, boring and useless, might well hope signals a gutsy new direction. I was given permission to blog the shots after Monday. Overnight, Kadel released four shots to models.com so they are now in the public domain.

Click here to see the rest.

Interestingly, MDC gave its blog post on Kadel's images the headline "Rubyfruit jungle", an obvious reference to McNeil's dalliance with Australian television personality Ruby Rose Langenheim.

This episode has provided an interesting illustration of how old media struggles to grasp the way new media works.

At time of writing this post News Ltd had yet to publish a single image of the September covers on any of its websites, including vogue.com.au and The Australian, in spite of the fact that the latter paper had first dibs on images of the covers in today's edition. For domestic readers who had access to the print edition, that is.

International publishers were offered the images for use on Monday - three days after the covers were first unveiled, effectively creating a double embargo.

Fashion fans, meanwhile, have already scanned the covers from today's print edition of The Australian and the images are wending their way across the net.

So much for control.

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.