Jeneil's Unreal

The latest issue of Love Magazine is set to go on sale in the Northern Hemisphere next week, and the magazine have given the cover featuring Jamaican model Jeneil Williams to Models.com to preview. Shot by Mert Alas and Marcus Piggott, who appear to be the incumbents at Love, the cover is a stunner and so is Jeneil. Unlike the cheesey Blake Edwards movie of the eighties, sorry Bo Derek, this body really is a perfect 10.

Slice Of Heaven

Dutch duo Viktor and Rolf have never been accused of doing things by halves. Their Spring 2010 collection, shown in October last year, also proved just how capable the pair are of thinking outside the square and ignoring the industry shifts and nuances of the time. The collection featured a series of cut tulle ball gowns that were structurally gorgeous and seemed to effortlessly defy gravity. While it was great to see their art on the runway, it is even better to see it here on the cover of the latest Dazed and Confused. Shot by Josh Olins the cover features a Viktor and Rolf favourite, and undeniably one of the world's hottest models, Magdalena Frakowiak. It is a lovely image and one of several covers for Magdalena already this year, but to our eyes, it is the gown that does the talking.

A little bit of trumpet blowing...

It's hard to do something well in New Zealand, to believe your are as good as anyone in the world, to have big dreams, and still live in New Zealand. Ask Graham Henry. Ask Peter Jackson. Ask NO Magazine. We briefly saw the new issue of NO today and it is fantastic, as each issue of the fledgling magazine has been. It isn't easy to publish a quality fashion and culture magazine in this country when the prevailing influences are: television, trends, rambunctious commerce and the hand-me-down edicts of other cultures which are fed to the unsuspecting populace like baby food. If you are going to do something outside of the New Zealand Square, you must think outside that square, and the good people of NO are. Here at Black we have also followed that vision from day one so we appreciate seeing it in others. You have to believe, almost blindly, in this country - and with Issue 11 we feel we are now getting the response that we have sought for so long. Since the release of Black issue 11 we have been humbled by the international response and (continued) posts on sites like Fashion Gone Rogue, The Fashionisto, F-Tape and Models.com among many, many more - it makes it all worth while. It's deeply rewarding for us, our contributors and we hope it will be inspiration for our friends at NO. Just do it. So that's our trumpet blown, we're hard out on Issue 12 and it's all just getting better...Grant & Rach x

Love Want More

Tonight in Sydney, Imogene Barron and Bec Parsons release the second of their Love Want "self-published creations." This time they have joined forces with Bartolomeo Celestino and art director supreme Jonathan Zawada to take the whole shebang to a new level. Other contributions or appearances come from Ben Sullivan (with whom Barron teamed for the current issue of Black), stylist Talvin Charter, creative of many talents Axel Moline and the fabulous Hannah Holman (above) whom we are sure you know by now. Hopefully Love Want will be available in Aotearoa soon but in the meantime as their strapline says "Love Want leaves you wanting more."

1 AM Online and Loving it

A couple of months back 1 AM morphed comfortably into an online magazine, and if the latest two issues are anything to go by, going online has been a revelation for the magazine's founders Glenn and Amanda Hunt. The Hunts were integral to some of the finest fashion and photographic moments of the late, occasionally great Pavement Magazine. The photography and fashion in Pavement when it was good, was very good. The sense of immediacy is back. With an apprenticeship in international fashion from the late nineties to the early noughties via Amanda's modelling career, and Pavement's network of international contributors, Glenn and Amanda traversed the fashion trail and had fun doing it. The couple's excellent Wish - u were here xxx magazine garnered a short but sweet reputation as a photographic vehicle. In short, they have plenty of international experience and it's showing. 1 AM talented.

Dark Purple

The new issue of Purple Fashion, our favourite fashion magazine in the world, is now in store at Mag Nation. Featuring a hard-as cover of Freja Beha shot by Terry Richardson and styled by Christopher Niquet, the mag carries Olivier Zahm interviews with Yoko Ono, Sean Lennon and Charlotte Kemp, Karl Lagerfeld and Miuccia Prada among many others. The rest of the content is of the usual high standard with perhaps a highlight being the beautiful naked shoot of Dree Hemingway - who appeared in the last issue of Black prior to blowing up big time - by Inez and Vinoodh. Absolutely essential!

Also in at Mag Nation is Issue #12 of TWILL. It's a hearty beast too, and one that we are honoured to be included alongside at F-Tape as one of the leading independent fashion magazines in the world. Equally essential...

Copies of these amazing titles are limited though so we suggest you get down to Mag Nation pronto or you will most certainly miss out.

Black Showcased On F-Tape

Black collage courtesy F-Tape

We have been honoured by inclusion on London fashion mega resource F-Tape's independent magazine special which has been created to coincide with the upcoming London Fashion Week. The site decided to pull together their choice of the best 20 or so indie fashion titles in the world and have included Black Magazine on that list. Considering the list includes such venerable titles as S., Tokion, Wonderland, Volt, Hercules, Zink, Dansk and many more, we are pretty excited - and for the contributors whose work was chosen by the F-Tape crew from the images supplied.

Thanks F-Tape!

Tangential Divergence

Photography by director of Tangent Emmanuel Giraud and excellent styling by Heather Cairns

The figurative dictionary meaning of tangent; a completely different line of thought or action, is an apt description of the new online fashion magazine which launched in Sydney two nights ago. There seems to be a proliferation of online fashion mags over the ditch and this can only be a good thing. Academy For Men and now, Tangent. We know only too well what it costs to produce a big, quality-printed edition of a magazine so why not go down the path of getting as much content and concept online for far less outlay as possible? Like AFM, and locally 1am, Tangent is a good-size Issuu-powered page-turning format with some really good local fashion shoots inside that suggest style is alive and well in Australia. All-in-all, a nice new line of thought or action.