Three is a magic number (maybe)

leoni milano

Happy Independence Day to my American readers. July 4 is also frockwriter’s birthday and today we turn three. How time flies. It seems like only yesterday that I was saying sayonara to mainstream media blogging (for smh.com.au and news.com.au) and venturing into the wild blue yonder of the indie blogosphere. What a ride it has been. And what can I say but, once again, thank you for your interest, your comments, your Tweets, your links, your trackbacks, your feedback and your shit-canning. Over exuberance of the latter at one point over the past year prompted me to finally upgrade my comments system. Couple of milestones. It took two years to reach one million page views. But just one to reach two million. What might it take to hit one million PIs per month? Certainly much more of an effort than currently goes into this blog, due to paid work commitments and other distractions (such as a family drama, which has occupied a huge amount of time over the past few months). But I’m working on it. Thanks to new advertising partner Pages Digital, the first ad campaigns have gone up. Early days of course. But baby steps. 

Andrej Pejic channels Ziggy Stardust for Vogue Paris

Australia’s edgiest new modelling star, Andrej Pejic, was the talk of the town at last month's Paris mens shows. Frockwriter mentioned at the time that he had just worked with a well-known photographic duo for a major international magazine. Well that magazine is the just-launched September edition of Vogue Paris and Pejic features in a 16-page fashion story called 'Rive gauche et libre'. Shot by Mert Alas and Marcus Piggott and styled by no less than Vogue Paris editor Carine Roitfeld, the story was inspired by '50s chanteuse Juliette Gréco and '70s gender bender Ziggy Stardust and also includes Malgosia Bela, Daphne Groeneveld and transsexual Givenchy muse Lea T. But make no mistake, Pejic is the star of the story. He not only opens and closes it, but accounts for almost half the images (below). Click here to see the entire spread. And stand by to see what role Pejic may play in the S/S 2011 womens show season, which is about to kick off in New York. Not to mention the November edition of an equally high profile international womens' title, for which he has just been shot by an even bigger name, opposite a top female cast. He also features in an upcoming spread in Arena Homme Plus. 

Givenchy's gender bender

mert + marcus via givenchy

With all the buzz about androgynous Oz model Andrej Pejic at the recent Fall Winter 2010/2011 menswear collections in Europe, it's been easy to overlook Givenchy's intriguing FW1011 womenswear campaign. It's not news - WWD reported it back in May - but alongside several high profile women, including Australia's Catherine McNeil (below), Givenchy creative director Tisci also cast his longtime muse, assistant and fit model, transsexual Lea T, nee Leo (second on the R, above). “She’s always been very feminine: superfragile, very aristocratic” Tisci told WWD. That was until Vogue Paris just published the following shot of Lea in its August edition. (warning NSFW).