Myer launched its autumn-winter fashion collections in sultry style, with supermodel Jennifer Hawkins opening the show draped across a glossy grand piano.
The Sidney Myer Music Bowl parade oozed sex appeal across high-impact looks for the cooler months, from 1980s black with punches of orange by Cue, to Karen Walker’s classic French styling, Wayne Cooper’s black on black, given texture and definition through metallics, leather and ruffles, and 1940s-inspired tailoring by Aurelio Costarella.
Architectural shapes were the theme, with models stalking the runway in striking silhouettes created by blazers with exaggerated shoulders, frocks cinched in at the waist, thigh-skimming pencil skirts and spray-on tights.
Highlights included Hawkins, the face of the retail giant, in a skin-tight red leather Charlie Brown dress, and a Manning Cartell cut-out leather bodice and thigh-high boots.
Fairytale gowns by Melbourne’s own Toni Maticevski, in dishevelled, vaporous layers, a slate-grey palette of relaxed pants and fine knits by TL Wood, and Nina Maya’s floral prints, contrasted by leather and metallics of other designers, offered softer sensuality.
The Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, playing its first large-scale fashion parade, was backed by a pumping contemporary soundtrack, setting a sophisticated mood.
Nick Bracks, son of ex-premier Steve, was among models in ripped jeans and distressed-leather jackets by Saxony, masculine double-breasted coats over collegiate knits and blazers by Country Road and debonair slim leg suits by Hugo Boss.
Models strode the runway in Brit Alexander McQueen’s affordable line, McQ, in a tribute to the late designer.
Hawkins said black was a perfect wardrobe staple, paired with leggings, strong jackets, and ankle boots with stud and chain details. “It is really rock ‘n’ roll and chic, there is a lot of charcoal, and black obviously, but then you have lots of jewel colours like red and blue and lots of metallics.”
VIP guests – including Rebecca Twigley and Chris Judd, model Laura Dundovic, Lauren Phillips, music supremo Michael Gudinski, and Melbourne Storm star Billy Slater – partied on after, with the catwalk transformed into a nightclub.
Watch the video
March 21st, 2010
She may be studying at Cambridge, but it seems that Lily Cole’s qualifications don’t impress the cosmetics firm Rimmel any more.
The supermodel-turned-student is one of Rimmel’s faces – but may not appear in its summer advertising campaign.
Solange Knowles, sister of singer Beyonce, is being lined up to take part alongside American actress Zooey Deschanel.
‘Lily is unlikely to have her contract renewed,’ says an insider.
‘Rimmel want to appeal to US audiences and are planning to launch their new faces soon.’
Georgia May Jagger and Coca Rocha have already signed up for the campaign.
A spokesman for Rimmel declined to comment.
Lazy days for Chelsy
When Chelsy Davy deferred a placement with a leading law firm to travel the world last year, she planned an ambitious itinerary.
But apart from a brief holiday with Prince Harry in Mauritius at the start of the year, Chelsy, 24, hasn’t made it further than her home in South Africa.
‘Chelsy has just spent ten days in Cape Town. She was planning to go to Asia, but those plans are on ice,’ says a chum.
‘She wanted to come back to the UK and see Harry.
‘She is definitely going back to Cape Town in June for the World Cup and Harry’s hoping to go but it depends on his training.
Chelsy’s apartment overlooks the football stadium – it’s in the best possible location.’
Princess Eugenie’s charity Tanzania trip
Princess Eugenie has made a secret trip to Tanzania to see the work of the charity Ace Africa, which helps Aids orphans.
The 19-year-old Newcastle University student has also been quietly campaigning for the Janada L. Batchelor Foundation, another African children’s charity.
‘Eugenie is a relatively new supporter of JBFC and she has been working for Ace Africa.’ said a friend. ‘She’s visited Tanzania privately.’
Read more: dailymail.co.uk
March 20th, 2010
She attacks assistants with bejewelled mobile phones and screams at airline staff . She’s also defied a broken childhood to inspire a generation. Now approaching 40, she gives Live a credible impression of a diva desiring desperately to atone
Inside a large studio in east London, photographers, assistants, stylists and make-up artists are waiting, and waiting, for Naomi Campbell. Some are very anxious. Others – the more experienced, I presume – are more resigned as time ticks slowly by. This is part of the deal with the notorious Naomi, the model with a record for bad behaviour as long as those endless Modigliani legs. Indeed, ‘late’ is at the bottom of the list, under tantrums, fights, drug abuse, alcohol issues and several assault charges, including hurling jewel-encrusted mobile phones at assistants.
A clamour of ever-greater demands announces her imminent arrival. Here, a manicurist has to be procured in minutes. There, an announcement goes out that all glass windows must be blocked out for her privacy. Quick! Gel tips for her fingernails must hastily be put on a bike. Now her publicist arrives with her waxing lady, Gina.
And finally, a mere one hour and 40 minutes behind schedule, the studio door flies open and in trips Naomi. She’s dressed all in black – tight leggings, a tailored frock coat and heels. Even in that first split second you can see that she’s preternaturally beautiful. Hair and make-up people fly to their positions in the dressing room. The blackout door booms shut.
Fifteen minutes later, it’s open again: Naomi is ready. She smiles, sticks out her hand and engages instantly. I tell her she appears to make people nervous. She throws her head back and laughs out loud.
‘Hey, you’re not the only ones. I get nervy about myself,’ she tells me in her softly spoken transatlantic drawl.
As icebreakers go, it’s a pickaxe. Circus aside – and it is a three-ring, world-touring circus – Naomi has quite clearly undergone a major transformation. There appears to be real credibility to the reports of her graduation from the selfish, ego-driven supermodel to the girl who Sarah Brown nominated as her ’21st-century heroine’ and Nelson Mandela calls his ‘honorary granddaughter’. This becomes increasingly evident during our conversation, which amounts less to an interview and more to a rather touching confessional about her appalling past behaviour, revealing an apparent determination now to do the right thing.
First, though, I must try hard to focus on what Naomi says, because, sitting just inches away from her face, it’s impossible not to be distracted. Two months away from her 40th birthday (May 22), her skin is completely unlined and there are no telltale signs of Botox or discreet surgery. And yet this is a girl who’s done it all to excess.
‘I’m not perfect. Look,’ she says, pointing earnestly to her mouth. ‘I have this scar on my upper right lip. When I started modelling I was told to fix it. I never did.’
Naomi says she’s looking forward to turning 40, but she’s chillingly aware of how close she came to becoming another casualty of the modelling world.
‘I thought I’d never actually make this birthday,’ she says.
‘I’ve had times when it was hard for me to look at myself in the mirror, because I didn’t really like who I was. The period from 1998 until 2005 was very difficult. I had to work out what was important – what I wanted to change and what I wasn’t happy with.
‘The thing with modelling is that we’re so used to travelling. The thought of just sitting still and having to digest and to think is scary, so you avoid it. It’s terrifying to look in the mirror and face all your fears.
‘I have people around me who tell me I’m beautiful. But that goes in one ear and comes out the other. Anger wasn’t the only one of my issues – I have lots of them. I had to get clean and stay in the AA programme. I understand what keeps me on the right path. I don’t go every single day; I just go when I need to and I have my sponsor.
‘Everyone knows what I’ve gone through. I’m human, I make mistakes, but I’ve come clean on them all. I don’t deny them. I’ve taken the heat and felt highly embarrassed by a lot of them. I’m not proud of the things I’ve done and the incidents that have happened in my life, and I would never say I was. But I did something about it. I’m not above learning lessons.
‘My family and my friends have helped. I don’t like yes-people. I don’t want yes-people around me; I think they’re extremely dangerous. I like people who are honest with me and tell me the truth. I can take it. I have much more respect for someone who tells me the truth. My real friends tell it to me like it is; I don’t need “enablers”. I need people who tell me what’s what.’
Happily, there seems to be a lot less prima-donna behaviour nowadays. The only recent report of an apparent ‘incident’ came a few days after our interview, when a limousine driver claimed the model hit him from behind in the car. Just when we were all thinking ‘there she goes again’, Naomi’s PR team insisted there should be no rush to judgement, and they were soon proved right. The driver declined to press charges, apologising to her and admitting that he had ‘got angry and overreacted’.
Naomi told Live, ‘I’ve worked very hard on correcting my previous wrongdoings and I won’t be held hostage by my past behaviour. I always try to treat people with respect. I’m pleased the misunderstanding’s behind me. I’ve moved on.’
So do we reckon this new Naomi really is here to stay? She clearly thinks so.
‘I’ve matured. I stop myself from getting tired and burnt out. I want a quieter life today. I’ve been through the party scene. You get older and your life changes. Things that matter to you when you’re 20 don’t matter so much when you’re approaching 40.’
Naomi has had a life quite unlike any other, mainly because she’s been famous for most of it, beginning long before her modelling days. She appeared in a music video for Bob Marley’s Is This Love? aged seven. Four years later she tap-danced in a Culture Club video. She was still only 15 when she appeared on the cover of Elle magazine, and two years later she made modelling history by becoming the first black model to front French Vogue.
Yet the circumstances of her childhood were far removed from the glamour of her early career. Her father, who she has never publicly named, walked out on her 18-year-old mother, Valerie, just two months after she was born. While her mother earned her living travelling in Europe as a dancer, the young Naomi was left in the care of a nanny and then enrolled at the Italia Conti Academy stage school with the aim of following in her mother’s steps.
source: dailymail.co.uk (more…)
March 20th, 2010
Model Gisele Bundchen kept her supermodel figure in check with a dance workout at a studio in Los Angeles.
The world’s highest paid model emerged sweaty and glowing after she enjoyed one of her daily high-intensity workouts.
A keen yoga devotee, the 29-year-old Brazilian gave birth to son Benjamin Rein in December.
And recently she shared her candid tips on how to look good post-pregnancy. The model snapped back into runway shape just weeks after giving birth.
In a new interview with Vogue magazine she revealed how post-birth she regained her figure instantly with little more effort than some yoga on a mat in her living room.
‘I think it’s muscle memory,’ she told Vogue.
Or it may have been the continuous exercise during her pregnancy.
She also admitted: ‘I did kung fu up until two weeks before Benjamin was born, and yoga three days a week.’
And in typically outspoken fashion, she gave her opinion on where some women go wrong when pregnant.
She said: ‘I think a lot of people get pregnant and decide they can turn into garbage disposals [dustbin].
‘I was mindful about what I ate, and I gained only 30 pounds,’ she added proudly.
Gisele is married to New England Patriots football star Tom Brady, who also has a son, John, aged two. John’s mother is Sex And The City actress Bridget Moynahan who the football star dated for two years.
Gisele upset John Edward’s mother Moynahan when she said she considered him her very own child.
Without mentioning her name in the Vaity Fair article, she said: ‘It’s not like because somebody else delivered him, that’s not my child. I already feel like he’s my son, from the first day.’
Earlier this year the model said her eight-hour birth ‘didn’t hurt in the slightest’.
Read more: dailymail.co.uk
March 19th, 2010
Pal Henry Holland spills the beans on their 13-year friendship
As the hottest supermodel in the world Agyness Deyn isn’t short of men who want to sleep with her.
But a word of warning from her best friend… she snores like a freight train!
And she’s liable to kick you on to the couch if she gets a better offer.
In an exclusive interview with the Mirror, Agy’s oldest pal Henry Holland spills the beans on their 13-year friendship.
Fashion designer Henry has been close with Agy – then a mousy-haired schoolgirl called Laura Hollins – since they were 13 years old and she served him a fish supper at the chippie where she worked after school in their native Lancashire.
Fast forward a few years and Henry, now 26, is designing posh frocks for A listers including Lindsay Lohan, Naomi Campbell and Sienna Miller as well as this week launching a more affordable range H! for Debenhams.
And Agy is gracing the world’s catwalks while coining in a ?3million fortune from her Manhattan base. It’s a far cry from those days back in Ramsbottom when they were teenagers yearning for an exciting life in London.
Henry, who now lives in North London with his boyfriend, says: “Agy and me used to go in the chip shop every Friday she worked there and we used to take the p*** out of the woman in the tabard.
“We had a lot of mutual friends and there was a dry ski slope near us that we used to go to all the time. We used to snowboard down there. And then when we went to college we spent a lot of time together. We have both worked really hard and we have pushed each other really hard.
“I lived with Agyness for three years as she started out modelling and it was hard work, really hard for her.
“A lot of girls get shot by Mario Testino when they are 15 and that’s it, their careers are made. For others like Agy, it is tough tough work, not easy at all.
“We both supported each other and when I was working in magazines she thought it was amazing. And when I got promoted to fashion assistant she was there supporting me.”
The final member of the Ramsbottom Three is their other close friend Jessica Fletcher, another schoolmate who now works as head of sales for his House of Holland and H! ranges.
“I met Jess when I was 11 and now she works with me and lives three doors down from me,” explains Henry.
“We all got together years ago, we were three best friends. I came first because I came to study here then Agyness came to do some modelling part time as she had some work down here.
“She would come and stay with me in my halls of residence and she would sleep in my single bed which was very frustrating because,” he pauses for comic effect at the thought of the supermodel and himself cramped up in a tiny bed, “… she snores!
“We later got a two-bedroom place together – me, Jessica and Agyness.
“There were two beds and we worked on a rotation system. They both had boyfriends so it was very frustrating as I was constantly on the couch!” The trio has temporarily broken up, however. Agyness has now moved to New York where her star has risen further.
“But she yearns for her down-to-earth mates from the small mill town to join her in the Big Apple.
“She’s not coming back,” Henry says wistfully.
source: mirror.co.uk
(more…)
March 19th, 2010
As she suns herself on a beach in St Barts, it’s hard to believe it has been 20 years since Stephanie Seymour found fame as a Sports Illustrated pin-up.
But even after giving birth to four children the Eighties supermodel still has the perfect figure which charmed a generation.
Her holiday comes as the 40-year-old mother-of-four adjusts to single life after splitting from her husband of 16 years.
In March last year she filed for divorce from real estate developer Peter Brant, whom she married in 1995 in France.
Following the split Stephanie is said to have moved into the maid’s quarters of her Manhattan home.
But as she relaxed under the Caribbean sun yesterday in her black bikini, she seemed happy and relaxed.
Stephanie’s trim figure is all the more impressive considering that since her time in the spotlight she has given birth to Dylan, Peter, Harry, and Lilly.
And if her past form is anything to go by she won’t be holidaying alone for long.
At the age of just 16 she began dating John Casablancas, the head of Elite Model Management, who was, at the time, married to model Jeanette Christjansen.
The couple lived together before Seymour broke off the relationship.
A short-lived marriage to guitarist Tommy Andrews failed in 1990, but resulted in the birth of her first son, Dylan Thomas Andrews in 1991.
Before dating rocker Axl Rose, she was briefly involved with actor Warren Beatty.
During the relationship with the rock musician she appeared in two Guns N’ Roses videos.
Stephanie and Axl broke up in 1993 after a two-year relationship when Axl accused her of being unfaithful.
The break-up was acrimonious with the couple counter-suing one another and each alleging assault.
Read more: dailymail.co.uk
March 17th, 2010
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