This week we’re all about the behind the scenes gossip – from rumours of Kate Upton at Vogue to whispers about the Melbourne and Sydney Fashion Week, with a super-secret ballgown creation thrown in…
It’s been a long time coming, and she’s more than earned her stripes in pure tenacity.
But after being called fat, ordinary and generally not up to par, it looks like Kate Upton will finally get a US Vogue cover.
She’s already featured in Vogue covers overseas, notably Vogue Italia – which featured her in a Curvy shoot in spectacular bondage gear – and Vogue UK, but the US cover is a big leap for any model.
It’s a particularly big deal because Anna Wintour is famously dedicated to putting actresses and singers on the cover rather than non-supermodels.
She’ll make exceptions for Gisele and Naomi, but her choices in cover girl – Michelle Obama, Beyonce – are all about the star power.
So a cover is a coup – and whispers indicate that Upton, who was so out of favour last year she paid Wintour for her Met Ball ticket out of her own pocket, is shooting soon.
How do we know? Her publicist dropped the bombshell of ‘an upcoming Vogue cover in June’ to an unsuspecting potential interviewer – then clammed up.
What do you reckon – step forward for curvy girls, or unworthy of the honour?
Image: Kate Upton on the cover of Vogue Italia.
Sydney Fashion Week is getting a little more pressured this year, as it’s revealed that Net-a-Porter are sending a team of buyers to check out the wares on show.
Net-a-Porter, the famous online shopping site home to upscale brands of every stripe (Vuitton, Chanel, you name it) also has a propensity for propelling young brands into the stratosphere.
They put their weight behind a brand and it does more in a week than a year’s worth of expensive publicity.
They currently stock a whole host of Aussie designers, from breakout star Dion Lee to stalwarts sass & bide and Ksubi, and have made regular trips down under on and off for years.
Want to know how the fashion sausage is made? It’s not the A-listers in the front row of your show that count, or even the editors. It’s the buyers.
If you’re a designer looking to make a move, people willing to stock your work and show it to the populace on their shop floor are your new best friends – Dion Lee, for example, is stocked by Net-a-Porter, Shopbop and high end boutiques like Matches, just to name a few.
So we can bet that the Net-a-Porter buyers – a twosome, Linda Ayepe and Octavia Bradford – will be feted with all kinds of invitations. And keep watching for the shows they look enthusiastic about, because the clothes will be all over the internet – and Net-a-Porter’s loyal customers.
Image: Net-a-Porter.
Melbourne Fashion Week is this week, and we’re getting excited – as much about the extra-curricular events as the shows.
One we particularly love? Spirit Of The Little Black Dress.
It’s an annual not-for-profit event designed to raise the profiles of young and up-and-coming designers by showcasing their talents in the best fashion art form: the LBD.
Every young designer worth their salt in Australia has submitted a design for a black dress- with a special emphasis on sustainable materials and environmental consciousness.
And SOLBD favours experimental shapes, textures and forward-thinking design – no Givenchy rip-offs here. The ten winners have been announced, after a rigorous selection process, using a panel of big-name fashion experts like the editor of FashionTrend magazine and the head designer of MATERIALBYPRODUCT.
And they’re now on show in Melbourne – at the Intercontinental on Collins St, of course, darling.
So if you want to see the future of Australian fashion and the new movements in the LBD, get yourselves to Victoria, quick smart…
Image: Spirit Of The Little Black Dress.
The Victoria & Albert Museum in London has one of the most famous collections of antique and designer gowns in the world. And they’re definitely not stuffy – after all, they showed a retrospective of Kylie’s fashion a year ago.
Now you can get a piece of fashion history for yourself, with news that the V&A is teaming up with a British fashion label to create a history-inspired range of 8 ballgowns.
The gowns range from the sweeping to the embroidered, and are all influenced by techniques and artisan methods represented in the V&A’s collection.
They range from a 1920s-influenced beaded gown to a 1930s drop-waist floral number. However, RESCU’s loving the prime piece, a dress called the Phoebe that uses ribbon-layering techniques founded by couturiers in the 1950s.
It comes in grey and purple, and we are absolutely on board.
Currently the just-released collection isn’t available in Australia, but they’re promising a wider distribution after a first limited run – and we predict many Aussie hands will want to clutch at these beautiful skirts.
What do you think of the collection?
Image: The dress collection by the V&A.
