New Face: Liza @ August Models

Photographer (among many other talents) Yasmine Ganley worked with Black fashion director Rachael Churchward and hair & make-up artist Natalie Dent to shoot Liza, a beautiful new face from August Models on the weekend. Liza is of Ukranian descent, and ticks all the right boxes effortlessly - definitely on our Blacklist of new faces to watch for 2011. Liza wears: Dress by Kate Moss for Topshop, brogues by Pointer for Karen Walker, vintage hat.

Jess Grubisa's otherworldly glamourous 80's African Queen

A Jessica Grubisa creation

All backstage photos by Matt Benns

When Whitecliffe's third year fashion student Jessica Grubisa designs a collection she always does so with one woman in her mind. This year, her fantastic collection entitled 'More Money, More Problems' was built around an "otherworldly glamourous 80's African queen," that basically, "jogged in Chanel." To accessorise her signature pieces Grubisa busts a move with high top fade afro headpieces and black full-face make-up, creating a classic hip-hop (think BDP, Schooly D) vibe entrenched in the mother continent. "The headpieces are my interpretation of a high-top fade - the birth of hip hop in the 1980's - everybody donned high, flat afros. I love this look and wanted to have a bit of fun with it," says Grubisa.

She also astutely interprets the classic dookie chain with her roped pieces, "the dookie chain was the largest status symbol chain worn by only the manliest of men in early 1980's hip hop. I love these chains and wanted to explore them in natural fibres with a primitive texture. I chose to work with raw wool and manipulate such a delicate material to look as heavy as a chain. I love playing around with gender roles and in this way I gave my woman the status."

Central to the collection is a a colourful, graf style afro print created lovingly by Grubisa herself, "the print is my baby. Hours and hours of colouring led me to discover digital printing, a way I could create my own fabrics. The whole idea was to combine early graffiti and tribal Ndebele patterns to create something unique - that looked like I had taken a felt pen and drawn on the clothes. If you look closely at the patterns you can see my felt marks, the colours and style best represented the idea of 'fresh' to me."

The Ndebele tribe of Central Africa also featured in her thinking when it came to the cowskin and fake fur pieces in the collection. Within the tribe, "when a man becomes a man they kill animals and don the skins around their necks, showing status and ranking tribe to tribe. The bigger the skin the bigger the man. I believe status for women, in a modern context, is handbags and shoes - usually the bigger the better - luxurious accessories that I believe share the same primitive connection. I wanted to explore this, and create bags and accessories that turned my girls into women."

Jess worked on several shoots as assistant fashion editor in the current issue of Black and will definitely work on many more. Seeing this collection though, it is clear Grubisa (below) has a big future as a young NZ designer who thinks outside the square (sorry, no pun intended), has ideas and concepts for Africa (ditto) and is undeniably one to watch.

M.A.C AIDs Fund milestone in NZ - $1 million raised this year

Today is World AIDS Day, a day that is close to our hearts on Dec 1 every year, and this year, there is something special to celebrate here in Aotearoa. One million dollars raised in NZ for the M.A.C AIDS fund purely from the sale of M.A.C Viva Glam lipsticks, a significant milestone for the visionary make-up company and more particularly the NZ team headed up by Jodie Matthews and Tatum Savage. To date $190 million has been raised for the cause through the Viva Glam programme so $1 million in a calendar year from a country the size of NZ is a serious achievement. We were honoured to have been invited to a luncheon yesterday with media and members of the Body Positive and Positive Women organisations - both of whom spoke eloquently and openly about just how important the donation from M.A.C is to keep these groups going - it is literally the most important source of income in growing these support units for people living with HIV and AIDs related illness in NZ. It was fantastic to see a team of M.A.C make-up artists acting as waiters and assisting in the cause as they do on a regular basis, there is a genuine partnership at work here, and around the world, between the cosmetics giant and the many organisations dealing with one of the world's most deadly diseases. M.A.C NZ announced a further $70,000 in extra support for the Positive Women foundation in Auckland - utterly admirable and heart warming. Congratulations to all concerned including those who buy the lipstick and retailers who take no margin...you can wear a ribbon to mark or at least talk about the subject but as they say at M.A.C, "Every day is World AIDS Day."

Hanoi Rocks...

Good name for a band but this post is about a restaurant in Auckland, a very fine one in Auckland's burgeoning Britomart District that specialises in Vietnamese food, Cafe Hanoi. We like it so much that we've eaten there twice in the past week and felt it was well worth a blog. Tony McGeorge and Krishna Botica are no strangers to food and hospitality as stalwarts of Ponsonby Social Club and the legendary Prego respectively. The pair saw an opportunity for a quality restaurant serving Vietnamese cuisine and knew that Britomart was the right place to set up. Along with chef Jason van Dorsten the duo spent plenty of time in Vietnam researching the food, decor and culture of a country steeped in tradition and taste bud titillation, and it shows.

For dinner last week we sampled a few of the dishes on the menu which are quickly garnering the eatery a reputation; sweet pickled shrimp open wontons, summer rolls of braised pork and shrimp, skewered chicken thigh with kaffir lime, lemongrass and ginger and the utterly memorable peppered soy shaking beef! Scrumptious. For lunch on Friday we decided to investigate the menu further and ordered a bottle of Margaret River Barwick Black Label Shiraz 2006, well priced at $48 a bottle to whet the whistle. We started with three dishes; beer steamed cockles w/ ginger, chilli and tamarind, again well priced @ $18.50, Crystal Bay prawns in a delicious sweet tamarind sauce and papaya ($26.50) and a fresh Savoy and red cabbage salad w/ Vietnamese herbs and palm sugar vinagrette, superbly priced @ $7.50. We followed that up with two more dishes; a hot pot of caramelised pork belly w/morning glory ($23.50) and wok seared market fish (ling) marinated in tumeric, ginger and galangal w/ green beans. Mouth watering yet? Ours were...

The service was brilliant from host Hector Palmer through to the young waiter that looks like Orlando Bloom and the environment was bubbly and comfortable without being too full on. Back in the 80's when Rachael was a young cook at the Verandah Bar and Grill, someone, it may have been Judith Baragwanath, used to often say, "What a mouth fuck!" and that is exactly how we felt about Cafe Hanoi. 5/5.

favorite rock stars looking very cool

keith richards was really freakin hot in the 70s

90210, then and now

i prefer "then" in terms of body image. these new girls are seriously too thin. but damn they wore some tore up sh*t back then ... 90210 fashions today = way better.

cri de couer sara wedge boot

lake bell is so g*ddamn adorable too

ohhhhh so buttery goodness.
they're pretty light despite the wood heel.
4 inches of love and 1 inch of platform.
on sale for $273 at endless.com or $390 at cri de couer.

GUCCI boots, Derek Lam Bag



Yves Saint Laurent Glass Jewelry

Hair Hair Hair Styles



Vera Wang is adorable! aside form her designs, she herself has great taste and amazing personal style.


GUCCI PATCHWORK TOTE BAG

MULBERRY ROXANNE PATENT TOTE BAG - SO AMAZING (bottom left)


snoop dog looking fierce ;-)





this anne hathway outfit has been my absolute favorite one she has worn.

girl crushes

these women have always held fascination with me. they have effortless amazing style, great attitude, and actually seem like genuine quality good people. fabulous women.