James Varley: Chadwick's latest glamour boy

mariah jelena kordzadz, fashion journal via chadwick

Andrej Pejic is in Tokyo, having just wrapped Japan Fashion Week and waiting to find out whether he flies to Paris or New York for a couple of very interesting job options. Meanwhile, he just scored a mention in W's November issue, in the "She's a (fabulous) he" story about fashion's androgynous moment. The story was penned by Hintmag founder Lee Carter, who describes Pejic as "a slender Kate Moss look-alike". But while Pejic's Australian mother agency, Chadwick, waits to see just how prominently the Melburnite features in the November edition of another equally prominent international fashion title, which is days away from release, the agency has just signed another new male model with a similarly androgynous look: 21 year-old James Varley. Modelling for just a few months, this science student's slim CV so far boasts a lookbook for Melbourne label In Mind's Eye, editorial in Fashion Journal 100, Melbourne Street Fashion and indie Melbourne magazine Spook and a few test shots. Frockwriter has little doubt it will soon be expanding. 

Black Cat

Yesterday frockwriter mentioned that Australian supermod Catherine McNeil had just undergone a rather dramatic change of hair and is now sporting a short black bob. Well here are the first images of said do, courtesy McNeil's New York agency Next Model Management. This is all Next would release, ditto the only other info: that it was cut/coloured by "a friend". Which may be code for McNeil's hair having been done on a recent job that has yet to be unveiled. Just as fellow Aussie and Chic/Next stablemate Abbey Lee Kershaw recently had her hair cut by Chanel during the shooting of the Fall/Winter 2010/2011 campaign. It's an interesting look for McNeil. Almost a little Beatle-esque. Or should that be... Bieber-esque?

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.

Bob's your uncle: Catherine McNeil also gets the chop

nicole bentley, vogue australia september 2010 via TFS

Yes that’s a wig that Catherine McNeil is sporting in this Vogue Australia September 2010 editorial, above. But apparently the world #12 liked the look so much, she’s gone and had it replicated. Well, kind of. By all accounts, McNeil's new do is not a "long, choppy" Abbey Lee Kershaw bob, aka a "Kob", but a bob nonetheless and black to boot. There is as yet no hard photographic evidence beyond a bunch of Facebook photos and the shot, below, published on October 21st on the blog of McNeil’s model mate Stephanie Carta, together with the caption, “Yesterday kitty cut her locks off, Sorry, died them black! Meow”. UPDATED 29/10: HERE ARE SOME FIRST SHOTS. Not even McNeil’s Sydney-based mother agency was up with her hair news when we enquired earlier this week. But after days of buzz on model forums, Stephen Lee at McNeil’s New York agency Next finally confirmed the earth-shattering news to frockwriter overnight: yes, McNeil has definitely cut her hair. Lee added that McNeil has been enjoying a month’s break of “total normality” from the modelling business. 

Gail Sorronda gets the Dolce e Gabbana treatment

Who needs Roberto Cavalli when you’re being mentored by Dolce e Gabbana? Overnight, Brisbane native Gail Reid popped up in this video interview on Dolce e Gabbana’s Swide website. Reid's five year-old Gail Sorronda label is one of 21 labels that were hand-picked by the Italian luxury titans for their brand new fashion incubator retail concept in Milan, Spiga2. “I love Gail Sorronda. It’s my taste” Stefano Gabbana told The Wall Street Journal last month. It has been a very big year for Reid. In March, she told frockwriter that she was being considered for a freelance consulting gig at Roberto Cavalli’s studio. By July, that had yet to transpire, but that month Reid was one of seven finalists in the 2010 edition of Who Is On Next, an emerging talent showcase in Italy that is jointly organised by Alta Roma and Vogue Italia. Great to see major fashion names supporting newbies although that said, it’s a little odd to see included in the Spiga2 lineup Paris-based Australian expat Martin Grant, who has been showing on schedule in Paris for a number of years. Grant established his label in Melbourne in 1982, when he was just 15.

Was Marion Hume fired from Vogue Australia for putting a black woman on the cover?

Naomi Campbell is never far from the headlines. On Sunday she managed to inadvertently embroil an Australian publisher in one. In a story headlined 'Editor sacked in racism row', Campbell told the UK Telegraph, "One time, I went to Australia. The editor-in-chief of a magazine there told me that she got fired for putting me on the cover. I do remember going there and saying, 'Where's the Aboriginal model? There should be one. They're beautiful women.'" No names are mentioned. But coincidentally, another Brit by the name of Marion Hume edited Vogue Australia for 18 months in the late 1990s, during which time she commissioned Peter Lindbergh to shoot Campbell for the June 1997 cover, above. In 1998 Hume was fired, following a controversial tenure, during which, it should be noted, she did not manage to stem the erosion of circulation and advertising that had begun prior to her appointment with the arrival of marie claire in 1995 and continued with the 1998 rebirth of Harpers Bazaar Australia. From 1995-1999 Vogue lost almost a quarter of its readers and two-thirds of its ad share. In 2002, Conde Nast withdrew from Australian publishing, selling the Vogue license to FPC Magazines, which in turn was acquired by News Limited in November 2006. 

Someone call security: How [frockwriter] got blacklisted by Google

Welcome to the blog that you have when you're not having a blog [NB This post was published simultaneously on frockwriter's Posterous, to circumvent security issues]. Just a quick headsup about the security ballsup that has gone down today on the frockwriter main blog. As anyone other than RSS and email subscribers may have noticed, since approximately 1144 AEST today, visitors to the site have been greeted by a great big red alert sign with the noticification: “Reported Attack Page! This web page at frockwriter.blogspot.com has been reported as an attack page and has been blocked based on your security preferences”. Together with a nifty little security guard icon holding a stop sign. Having been Google spoofed in April, I immediately assumed that a one-on-one hack job was not beyond the realm of possibilities. On closer inspection, however, it emerged that the issue was affecting several other Australian sites: Pages Digital and at least three other sites, the city-centric digi hipster guides, Two Thousand, Three Thousand and Five Thousand. What’s the common link? UPDATED: NOW OBVIOUSLY BACK ON THE AIR. SEE EXPLANATION AT THE END OF POST. 

Stolen Girlfriends Club has ordered 1000 jam jars for its Sydney party, but there won't be any Stolen Generation T-shirts

stolen girlfriends club AW11/kent vaughan

Next Thursday, Auckland hipster collective Stolen Girlfriends Club will stage its second Sydney shindig in five months, this time to unveil a new short film shot by renowned Kiwi snapper Derek Henderson, to promote SGC’s new Heavy Metal jewellery line. The film stars photogenic Kiwi lovebirds Dempsey Stewart and Jasper Seven modelling the inaugural collection, We Are Ugly But We Have The Music (below). Frockwriter has previously documented SCG’s predilection towards serving alcohol in jam jars at events and next week will be no different with, we are told, 1000 jam jars ordered for the occasion. One thing we won’t be seeing at the event, however, is an “I belong to the Stolen Generation” T-shirt, as appeared on SGC's runway in Auckland last month. 

Sydney and Auckland street style in WWD

Street style photography is an enormous component of the fashion blogosphere, which has in fact launched blogging empires (The Sartorialist and Jak + Jil to name but a few). This photoreportage genre however definitely predates the net. Bill Cunningham’s first street style shots were published in The New York Times in 1978, but he first began documenting the fashion choices of ordinary people on the street during WWII. British style magazine i-D has a 30 year archive of its signature street style shots - aka “Straight-Ups” - on its website. And WWD, where Cunningham worked briefly, has had its own longstanding series of street style shots called They Are Wearing. As the paper's Australasian correspondent since 1996, I have shot quite a few “TAWs” in Sydney, Melbourne, Auckland, Seoul and Taipei for WWD FAST and (Fairchild News Service's now defunct menswear paper) DNR. During the Spring/Summer 2011 show season WWD kicked off a series of global TAW galleries in the 'Eye Scoop' section and yesterday two of mine went up, both shot last month. Here is the Sydney gallery and here is the Auckland one, which was shot around Vulcan Lane during New Zealand Fashion Week. Not including this random shot, above, which was taken for WWD FAST at Sydney's Glenmore Road, Paddington intersection in May this year. Perhaps you might recognise some of your mates. 

The lovely bones: Julia Saner

elite paris via models.com

Have been toying with the idea of starting a couple of photo series. Thin models is one of them. And yes, this is quite possibly one of those lose-lose scenarios in which you can't please anyone, with body image zealots accusing you of providing thinspiration for those with mental health problems and model fanatics accusing you of “sensationalism” and hating on their favourites. But here goes. Frockwriter is well aware that pretty much everyone outside the fashion business thinks that everyone in it has an eating disorder. That is not the case. Being thin is however most definitely a job requirement for most models, it always has been and particularly at the top end of the industry. Just as it is for ballet dancers and elite athletes - that's what world number 5 Abbey Lee Kershaw claims in this interview. Incidentally Kershaw, who happens to be the daughter of a retired elite athlete, footballer Kim Kershaw, looked like this in 2005. There is a fine line however, pardon the pun, between thin and painfully thin. In spite of navel-gazing and industry initiatives over the past three years, including the best efforts of French MP Valérie Boyer to outlaw websites and fashion advertising that promote anorexia and to provide health warnings on Photoshopped images, images continue to pop up which make you do a double take. Case in point, this shot of 18 year-old Swiss newcomer Julia Saner.