One of the thing's I've always admired about Coco Rocha is her ability to say no to certain things, especially in an industry which is often all about about saying 'yes'. Nudity or partial nudity is one of those things so when when this image of the model on the cover of Elle Brazil surfaced, many were surprised but it looks like Coco felt the same way.
Today the model took to her Tumblr to explain that she was actually wearing a flesh coloured body suit under the dress, which has has been photoshopped away without her authorisation:
As a high fashion model I have long had a policy of no nudity or partial nudity in my photo shoots. For my recent Elle Brazil cover shoot I wore a body suit under a sheer dress which I now find was photoshopped out to give the impression of me showing much more skin than I was, or am comfortable with. This was specifically against my expressed verbal and written direction to the entire team that they not do so. I’m extremely disappointed that my wishes and contract was ignored. I strongly believe every model has a right to set rules for how she is portrayed and for me these rules were clearly circumvented.
Coco has been an avid supporter of empowering models to take informed choices through her work on the board of the Model Alliance so her response is completely justified. We can only hope that more models feel confident enough to follow suit as when something like this happens.
A week ago this image of Alexa Chung, which she posted on Instagram, helped keep the current debate about banning 'thinspo' on social networking channels alive. Tumblr was the first to ban the images on their platform and after receiving a lot of images on their platform as a result, Pinterest quickly followed suit leading the same thing to happen to Instagram. Not willing to appear like they are not taking a zero-tolerance approach too, Instagram release a statement in their community guidelines prohibiting the images:
Don't promote or glorify self-harm: While Instagram is a place where people can share their lives with others through photographs, any account found encouraging or urging users to embrace anorexia, bulimia, or other eating disorders; or to cut, harm themselves, or commit suicide will result in a disabled account without warning. We believe that communication regarding these behaviors in order to create awareness, come together for support and to facilitate recovery is important, but that Instagram is not the place for active promotion or glorification of self-harm.
Now hashtags like 'thingspo' and 'thinspiration' no longer yield search results.
Do you think Instagram's decision to follow the others will make any difference?
Anyone following Vena Cava will know that last year was a tough one for the brand. After a string of financial problems everything thankfully took a turn for the better last month when Sophie Buhai and Lisa Mayock, the founders and creative forces behind the brand, confirmed that they had secured investment with LF USA. When the news was announced the pair said that they were pleased to be able to pass on the business reigns to someone else and considering that Li & Fung (the subsidiary of LF USA who the pair are working with) have helped make brands like Keds and Rachel Zoe a success, it's safe to say that they are in good hands.
Buhai reiterated this in a recent interview with Refinery 29 saying, 'We reached a point where we realized that in order to take the brand where we wanted it to go, we needed a strategic partner to help with the back-end. We were sick of getting caught up in logistics and wanted to spend more time on the product and on being creative. LF reached out to us. It was a strange psychic thing and everything fell into place,' she said and so far so good. 'We've been working with LF now for a few months, and it's far beyond what we had thought it might be. They're experts at sourcing, tech design, fabrication, manufacturing, and many other things that can be extremely difficult for a small brand to get a handle on. But at the same time, they understand that we're the experts when it comes to our brand and our customer, and are totally open to letting us continue to do awesome and weird branding projects like our online garage sale, non-fashion-persons' Fashion's Night Out, zines and anything else that helps our brand maintain its 'personal-ness,' Mayock added.
Kendall and Kylie Jenner, the youngest of the Kardashian-Jenner brood, are going from strength to strength and are slowly building their own brand independent from older sisters Kim, Kourtney and Khloe. While we've always seen them on the family's reality show, it's only relatively recently that they've caught everyone's attention. In the last year the pair have appeared in a string of magazines and are quickly gaining a strong teenage following and now Seventeen magazine have decided to tap into that.
Today the magazine confirmed that the pair have signed on as their new 'West Coat fashion contributors'. According to the press release that went out this morning, the pair will appear in web videos and a monthly feature called, 'Kendall & Kylie's Fashion Journal. The decision makes sense. Seventeen did really well when they teamed up with America's Next Top Model a few years ago so with circulation numbers dwindling and ad pages decreasing, it was only a matter of time before they tapped into the reality TV world in some way again. The Jenner's seem the perfect fit.
Claire Danes' red carpet choices has always been a bit of hit and miss for me. There's nothing particularly wrong with her style but her plain Jane aesthetic has never appealed to me and the same is true for this look.
To attend the premiere of 'Hysteria' during the 2012 Tribeca Film Festival yesterday the actress wore this block coloured Narcisco Rodriguez dress. It definitely works on her but I can't help but wish that she changed it up with the designers that she wears and go for something less classic and obvious or even add some accessories to add something different.
Kim Kardashian's thirst for attention is a constant bug bare but there is no denying that she knows how to dress her body and come up with a good red carpet ensenble.
Last night was no different as she stepped out on the red carpet for the launch of brother-in-law Scott Disick's new restaurant wearing a black peplum dress from Givenchy by Riccardo Tisci. The peplum shape works around her curves beautifully and the black Bottega Veneta clutch bag and Christian Louboutin heels are the perfect finishing touches.
Pay day is this week and the timing couldn't be better because on Monday ACNE will launch a special capsule collection - great for your wardrobe of course, not necessarily so good for you bank balance. Nonetheless, the collection is a special one and features a tightly edited selection of reworked ACNE classics from over the years.
Unlike all of the colour we saw from them for S/S, everything in the collection comes in white making the collection full of great staple pieces that will easily slip into your wardrobe. Style wise you can expect some strong poplin shirts, interesting shiny iridescent leather pieces, basic jersey tees and easy leather flat sandals.
The collection will be available online on Acnestudio.com as well as through Net-A-Porter, Selfridges and Liberty.
To say that Vogue Paris' new direction under Emmanuelle Alt has been controversial would be an understatement. When she was announced as the magazine's new editor-in-chief she had no qualms in saying that the magazine will move towards a softer feeling and that sentiment has ran true ever since. It's this softer feeling that was the subject of much discussion recently when the magazine dropped their May cover starring Laetitia Casta.
Compared to the Roitfeld-styled Casta cover from the December/January 2009 issue, the latest version couldn't be any further apart. The latter was a lot less provocative and directional than you would expect from Vogue Paris and as a result, I was amongst the critics unhappy with the cover. Now that the whole cover editorial is out, though, I'm not as hostile as I thought I would be. The shoot is actually really romantic but in an interesting way especially with that black swan Giles headpiece. Am I convinced that this is the direction that Vogue Paris should go, well no, but hopefully as time goes on Alt will find a better balance to the magazine of old that w all know and loved and one more in tune with the reality that she's searching for.
US Vogue's May cover starring Scarlett Johansson was a bit of a disappointment considering the strong run they have been on with their covers recently. Aside from the beautiful Grace Coddington-styled shoot with Natalia Vodinaova, the inside of the magazine follows in the same vein as the cover.
Following on from the industry's current penchant with cats (even SHOWstudio's recent Instagram shoot had them) Arizona Muse appears in the magazine with a black and white cat in the editorial called 'Cat's Meow'. The shoot, styled by the magazine's contributing editor Elissa Santisi, isn't the strongest they've released recently and the addition of the cat doesn't seem to add anything. More importantly, though, what do you make of Muse's hair?
I've always been a fan of David Bailey's work but he wasn't the person that excited me the most on the list of speakers at Vogue's Fashion Festival over the weekend. Unfortunately I was unable to attend but from the reports, the majority of the guests went away feeling that Bailey was amongst their favourite speakers from the weekend and it quickly becomes clear why.
His comments were honest to put it mildly. 'Don't ever sign anything for fucking Condé Nast or Hearst,' he reportedly said rather frankly. 'I had a ghastly contract with American Vogue,' he revealed but despite that, he always had a good relationship with the magazine's former editor Diana Vreeland. 'I used to have dinner with her every Thursday. I really loved Vreeland, though I didn't like working for her.' His blunt confessions didn't end there. Talking about an editor a Vogue he said, 'I used to sprinkle rat shit on her pillow every night, and she used to pick i up with a Kleenex that had flowers on it and say 'Bailey, what do you think that is?' I'd say, 'It looks like rat shit.'
Where you there? What did you think of Bailey's talk?
