Thursday, January 05, 2006

Exclusive: MODEL HAS BRAIN...


It's that time of the month. No, not that time.
It's a time when perusing the shelves of any of my fave magazine dispensaries finds me unable to locate anything I haven't already bought or read, and leaves me desperate for a fashion frippery fantasy fix. Breathe, just a few more days to wait for the February issues. Hence, I bought Aussie Vogue. Guest edited by hot model of the moment Gemma Ward.
La Moss's guest editorship of Paris Vogue was more like a tribute to the fabulousness of Kate, in which her only real involvement seemed to have been posing for some snaps and a one sentence thank you to the Vogue staff. Then we had the expected collection of photographers favourite shots of her along with quotes from them about how wonderful, special, professional, etc etc she is. In short it was the fashion industry standing by our Kate and just a bit tetchily saying 'leave her the fuck alone, how many fucking icons do we have left nowadays anyway?'

So little Aussie Gemma comes skipping along to guest edit Vogue Australia, a slip of a girl, just shy of her 18th birthday. She writes an intelligent, coherent backstage diary of the s/s 06 Paris/Milan/NY shows, which brilliantly conveys the energy of each city and of the cerayzee world of fashayowney. She also interviews Marc Jacobs and then tells us her favourite places in New York, her favourite beauty products and gives an interview to Vogue about her meteoric rise to fame and fortune. And the 'top ten things that Gemma loves right now' include cocker spaniel puppies and a Venus flytrap plant. There are pics of her clowning throughout the magazine, unlike the Moss lookey likey they kept using in Vogue Paris to illustrate her style.

I know Kate likes to be all mysterious and 'like a silent movie star' thus making her iconic as we all project whatever we want onto her. (Now we've heard her squawking in the Virgin mobile ad that's all shot to shit anyway.)But as guest editor of French Vogue she could have given us just a snippet more of herself. I suppose she had quite a good excuse what with being devoured by the tabloid press and shipped off to rehab.

Gemma Ward comes across as intelligent, fresh, unaffected by her position, upbeat and with nothing to hide. As well as being incredibly young, beautiful, versatile and landing all the high profile campaigns and magazine covers. So why don't I hate her?

image source

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Whenever beauty and brains go together, I find myself uplifted and depressed. The former because these are these are the two cosmic halves, separated twins, that belong together but that instead live their lives apart (typically beauty in some glamorous albeit low-paying job in a gallery or shop in London / NY/ Paris and brains in some unglamorous and low-paying job in Des Moines, Iowa). Hence the depression. Does she have to be beautiful and smart? Can't she leave one of them to someone else? Does she have to have it all?

Wonderfully yours,

BB

Anonymous said...

Hi Lola.........there´s a "Costume"-mag(best Danish fashion mag) on its´way to you in the post asap!!!!! Keep writing........always a plaesure to read..:-)
Your Danish friend x xX