Marnie's Showcase

One highlight of the Mercedes Fashion Week was the photographic exhibition held by one of our most talented designers Marnie Skillings at her boutique in Glenmore Road Paddington.

blondes greet

Marnie with Michelle Jank

TO celebrate the launch of her new collection titled Trait, Marnie turned  her shop into an art gallery to showcase 10 portraits of inspirational women including Sophie Lee, musician Julia Stone and shoe designer Terry Biviano.

Skillings is known for her feminine, romantic and sophisticated  pieces and has a confirmed following of fans who limo straight to her boutique when in town- including  Kylie Minogue, Nicole Kidman, Julia Stone, Abbie Cornish and Paris Hilton who shopped there recently during her visit to launch the Marquee nightclub at the Star casino.


left : Marnie Skillings and one of her very best creations-(an unimpressed) Kosta. 
right : Marnie's designs

    the portrait of Julia Stone

                                                                    

                                                            

Jack ( The Ripper) Died In Australia

Forget the Queen's respected surgeon, or the member of the Royal Family. Finally the true identity of the infamous Jack The Ripper has been exposed (120 years after he sliced up 5 prostitutes in the East End of London)

Jack was a Londoner known as Walter Thomas Porriott who was well known to police as Andrew John Gibson. He lived in London at the time of the murders and then sailed for Sydney just as the murders stopped and The Ripper vanished from the news. Apparently he lived in Brisbane and died in 1952 after a long career as an impostor and fraudster.

It really stands to reason. Not only were convicts sent to the colonies for a range of petty crimes but upper class families often sent their wayward sons to the other side of the world to escape scandal. And where better? At the turn of the last century Australia was a favoured place to escape to and create a new identity. It still is.
As the Ripper was never caught, it could be said that being confined to living out one's life in Brisbane was a suitable punishment.
Read the full story here at the Telegraph.co.uk

STOP PRESS : Now former solicitor John Morris claims Welsh-born Lizzie Williams (left) was the Ripper and says she killed her victims because she could not have children, ripping out the wombs of three in an "unhinged state".
 Read more here.
 
Tommorrow : Is Rupert Murdoch related to the The Ripper?

Murdoch Watch #1 : Rupert Tweets

Our favourite Australian born media mogul Rupert Murdoch has been at Twitter again in the past few days telling all that he is busy writing a speech :
"Tomorrow receiving Jewish Museum Heritage Award. Busy preparing short speech, mainly about Israel."
and complained about a rash of insulting tweets. The British journalist Jon Snow responds:

Billy's Memorial Vandalised

Billy Thorpe & Lynn

The memorial at the Sunbury Pop Festival site for the late rocker Billy Thorpe has had it's plaque stolen and his widow Lynn Thorpe has expressed her dismay and sadness to her Facebook pals.

gone

Manchester born Thorpe emigrated to Australia with his parents and became a child star using the name Little Rock Allen. By his early 20s he was the biggest Australian pop star with a string of hits and fronted his own television pop show. During the 80s he lived in the USA and had a number of hits there and wrote music for top TV shows like Star Trek, the Disney corporation and Universal Studios.

In the UK he formed a band with Mick Fleetwood of Fleetwood Mac before returning to live in Australia in the late 1990s. A hugely popular and well liked entertainer, Thorpe died of myocardial infarction at the age of 61 in 2007.

Anyone who knows where the plaque is should ring their local copper's station.
Below is Billy with his big hit "Over The Rainbow" from 1966:

Day 4 Fashion Week-Jenny Kee

Jenny Kee and pals

inspiration?

If one didn't know the London publicist Lyn Franks, one could be forgiven  for thinking that perhaps Australian/Chinese/Italian designer Jenny Kee was an inspiration for Edina Monsoon of Ab Fab fame. Perhaps Kee was also a fashion  influence for Dame Edna Everage.

In between reminding us in the pages of Woman's Day every five years or so that she once had an affair with John Lennon ("I turned him on to Asian girls") Kee has revived her original fashion label Flamingo Park which she started many moons ago in the Strand Arcade after returning from a few years in London. The high point at Flamingo Park was presenting a riot coloured jumper bearing an embroidered  Koala Bear to Princess Diana which Diana wore to the Windsor Polo when she was pregnant with Prince William.

watch out for spiders

The last time we encountered Jenny was at the launch of her book Jenny Kee-A Big Life at the Powerhouse Museum some years ago. The guests had to 'ommmm' for 2 minutes before speeches to raise the vibrations in the room.

The book is a pretty good read detailing Jenny's adventures over the years from an extremely beautiful teenage Kee hitching a ride with an amphetamine crazed trucker from Alice Springs to Darwin, her Oz Magazine days in London with Richard Neville and Martin Sharp, a snub from Lennon and Yoko Ono when they once came across Kee at her stall in the Chelsea Antique Market on Kings Road and an adventure involving the game-keeper's son at the grand Beaulieu estate in Hampshire where she glowered at her host Lord Montague who perceived Jenny had designs on the young chap.

This many colours combined gives the Shuttle a migraine-literally so are best viewed through sunnies but ordinary folk should be safe gazing on these kaleidoscope designs. Our favourite is the kaftan draped in gum leaves (above). The only thing missing from the outfit is one of those large Hunstman spiders that inhabit eucalyptus trees en masse. Dame Edna would have included one!.

Day 3: Mercedes Fashion Week

star models : the Stenmark twins

 left : street wear


right : Alice McCall

                                         
                                                                   

left/right : Bec & Ridge



















 

right & left : Ellery























left & right : Jayson Brundson
                                              

NY Photographer Honoured

The career of the legendary New York snapper Bill Cunningham , now 81 years old, was celebrated when he was awarded a Medal of Excellence at the Waldorf Astoria hotel at a charity gala that raised over a million dollars for Carnegie Hall's Well Music Institute.

Bill &Anna Wintour

Cunningham is one of the last residents of the few apartments in Carnegie Hall and he has been a fixture on New York streets and at fashion shows and parties for decades.

The movie on his life (trailer below) should be required watching for the coterie of Aussie publicists who often exude a demeanour far grander than their clients and armed with their precious 'communications' degrees, really have no clue what the business is all about.
Sydney must be one of the few major cities of the world where the unkempt aggressive paparazzi are taken seriously by many publicists and public relations 'experts'.

Sarah Jessica Parker

At red carpets openings. movie premiers and such  the press pen will be packed with ghastly paparazzi - the same snappers who prowl the streets and beaches of Sydney, are aggressive, rude and have nil interest in their subject apart from the few dollars that may be made from a picture.

There are probably four genuine photojournalists in Sydney who operate like Cunningham , who have respect for the people they photograph yet are shouldered aside by the bores of the pap world. These snappers tend to like getting to know their subject, often chatting to them and building up a rapport. The paps on the other hand are mostly filling their files with generic snaps of celebrities for future use.
 But who are we at the Shuttle with a combined 100 years of experience to tell these woolly newbies how to work?                              
 Photographs : www.patrickmcmullan.com

Colour & Movement from Camilla

Sydney's Mercedes Fashion Weak Week is upon us again. Never mind that the star designers have done a bunk, there's till a load of aspiring newbies willing to stump up 60 grand to show their wares.

 Here are a  few shots from today's parade with the ever so nice Camilla Franks (right) who whips up these wondrous floaty caftans. Zillionaire Gina Rinehart and Oprah Winfrey buy them by the dozen:

 Caftans for blokes (right)

(left) Cardboard cut-out hats-a must.




(right) Where to carry your boomerang-why didn't I think of that?







(below) Caftans For Kids

the Seal Of Approval from Oprah.

Capt.Clive of The Titanic 11

Just when politics was getting boring with the 'scandals' surrounding Speaker Peter Slipper allegedly sexually harassing a male staffer and Labor's Craig Thompson resigning over endless claims a union credit card was used at the Sydney bordello A Touch Of Class having gone off the boil.

Now, comes news that our favourite mining billionaire the portly Clive Palmer has set up a new shipping company called Blue Star Line and the announcement that he has commissioned a Chinese shipping company to build a replica Titanic for his tourism company and that he will stand at the next Federal election for the seat of Treasurer Wayne Swann.

Palmer worth a reputed $4B was the mastermind of a campaign in 2009 to scupper then PM Kevin Rudd's plans for a mining tax that would raise a billion dollars a year. Along with fellow mining magnates Gina Rinehart and Andrew 'Twiggy' Forrest, Palmer held a rally in a Perth park claiming the tax would be the ruin of us all. After his success in watering down the tax he celebrated by buying 55 favored employees each a new Mercedes SUV  for Christmas.

Palmer says the Titanic 11 will be 'unsinkable' and that "you don't have to be too clever to be a politician"!. Quite.

Memorable Freudian Slips at Leveson # 1

Under questioning from Robert Jay QC at the Leveson Inquiry : famed Australian/American media mogul Rupert Murdoch who promised editorial independence to Margaret Thatcher's government during his 1981 successful bid to takeover  the Times Newspapers and thus avoided the Monopolies and Mergers Commission, responds to Jay's inference that he may influence politicians:

 

“If any politician wanted to know what I think, they only had to read the editorials”

Madame Arcati Scoops the World-by 12 months

It was exactly 12 months ago that the famed British blogger Madame Arcati drew our attention to an interview with the wife of the Syrian president,  Asma al-Assad in US Vogue, declaring it in bad taste as demonstrating Syrians were being massacred by security forces. Shortly after the Arcati story, the article disappeared from Vogue's website.:
                                  
 "Vogue keeps up Asma al-Assad interview as Syria burns

While the Syrian government massacres its revolting peasants, I see that US Vogue has still yet to take down its recent ghastly and fawning interview with Asma al-Assad, Syria's 'dynamic first lady' who is on a 'mission to create a beacon of culture and secularism.' She should import the BBC's resident proselytising atheist Prof Brian Cox to help her out."

                                                                                           

Now the fabled Washington Post has just caught up to speed, 12 months after Madame Arcati's scoop.
Read the story as re-produced in the Sydney Morning Herald here and Madame Arcati's original posts here
                                           ****************************************


 Two days ago we asked who was the famous brother of the person in the snap we published.
The answer was Kevin Spacey.

 The pic was of his older brother Randy Fowler who runs the Rod's Limo Hire company in Boise Idaho.
You can see the family resemblence-can't you? :

Fool's Gold Coast

Michael & Donrecka Issakidies

For about 4 years they were a fixture around Sydney at all the right parties, shop openings and soirees. Noticeable for their 'his and hers" matching gold Rolls Royce's.

And then they seemed to vanish. It appears businessman Michael Issakidis and his glamorous blond wife Donrecka had decamped to the glittering Gold Coast in Queensland.

John Burgess

Yesterday Australian Federal Police and investigators from the tax office seized $40million in assetts from Issakides and a business partner during raids, including the Issakides Gold Coast mansion, another in Sydney, 4 Rolls Royce's and 4 other luxury cars along with two motor cruisers.

Issakidis had recently been in the media after he sued the TV game show host 'Baby' John Burgess and his wife Jan for $40,000 in rent owed on a 71st floor beach front Gold Coast apartment rented to Burgess. Now Mr Issakidis has been charged with conspiring to deal in proceeds of crime worth $63 million and defrauding the Australian Tax Office of tens of millions of dollars. If convicted the penalty can be up to 25 years in jail.

Scooping the British Tabloids: Clive James' Lover

A remarkable revelation on the tabloid TV show A Current Affair. Leanne Edlesten, former wife of famed medico Dr Geoffrey Edelsten had an eight year affair with writer Clive James.

She called him Mr Wolf because of the first time he 'ravished' her when they had sex and he called her Ms Hood, short for Little Red Riding Hood. Apparently they met in a Circular Quay restaurant and Leanne then joined Clive in his hotel room. She returned the following day and told him she was getting divorced. Clive jumped on her immediately.


Each time Clive returned to Sydney they would continue the affair.. Before and after sex they ate Cherry Ripes because James loves them so much. Clive James is 73 and lives in a basement flat in Cambridge after his wife threw him out when she discovered raunchy photos of Leanne on his computer.
 Edelesten says she has spoken up as she is sure the tale is about to be published in the British tabloids.

Geoffrey & new wife Brynne Edelsten

The Twitterati has gone crazy over the tale. One twit said "why is that lady bothering a senior citizen ?" referring to vision on ACA of Leanne confronting Clive at a Cambridge bus stop.

 Watch A Current Affair here.

Family Feud #1

He's like a fabulous cross between Liberace, Barry Manilow and Krusty The Clown. And he has a very famous brother who he doesn't always see eye to eye with. Can you guess who his more famous sibling is ?
He features in the video below (not the famous brother) :

Answer tomorrow.