Pirelli Calendar 2014 Uses First Plus-Size Model Ever
The Pirelli Calendar is the most prestigious event in the modelling year: if you feature on one of its pages, you’ve made it.
And this year, the line-up includes the brand’s first ever plus size model, Candice Huffine.
It’s the calendar’s 51st birthday this year – Pirelli, a tyre company, started the calendar as a gift for high-flying clients, and it gradually evolved into a showcase of the world’s top models and photographers. Every model worth her salt, including all the 90s supers, have starred- sometimes multiple times.
It’s still next to impossible to have the calendar delivered personally – it’s only available to a very select list of subscribers – but Pirelli have kindly built buzz by broadcasting slivers of the 2015 shoot early.
The theme this year? Fetish. Joan Smalls said she played a ‘boxer dominatrix’, and the stylist, ex-French Vogue editor Carine Roitfeld, is known for doing edgy, controversial shoots.
But the main talking point is the selection of Huffine. She’s stepping up beside Raquel Zimmerman, Natalia Vodianova, Karen Elson and other boldface modelling names.
Huffine has featured on the cover of Vogue Italia and been in shoots for Harper’s Bazaar, US Vogue and i-D magazine, among others. But is it a token pick to satisfy critics, or a genuine change?
What do you think about Huffine as a Pirelli model?
Image: Huffine for Pirelli 2015.
Andrej Pejic Transitions To Female
Australian-Serbian model Andrej Pejic, who made a splash as the first male model to stomp womenswear catwalks, would now like to be known as Andreja.
Andreja revealed that she underwent sex transition surgery in the US earlier this year, and is definitively a woman.
It wasn’t a small reveal, either. Pejic sat down for an exclusive interview with People Magazine to debut her new gender, saying, “I want to share my story with the world because I think I have a social responsibility. I hope that by being open about this, it becomes less of an issue.”
Pejic hit headlines the world over when she first came onto the scene as a physically male model who nonetheless featured in Fashion Weeks, including closing the 2011 Gaultier Couture show as a bride.
For a while, Pejic says, she was “proud of my gender non-conforming career”, but eventually she decided to take the final step and have surgery to become physically female.
So what does this mean for Pejic’s career? After all, female beauties are two a penny – but we’re hoping that Pejic’s androgynous start has meant that she’ll be able to maintain her edgy niche.
Image: Andreja Pejic.
New Website Lets You Design And Wear Your Own Clothing Line
Ever wanted to design your own clothes – but lacked the sewing skills, draping knowledge, time and essentially everything?
New website Bombsheller is here to help. It’s marketed as the world’s first virtual clothing factory; design your clothes to your own custom specifications, then have them delivered to your doorstep.
Seems almost too good to be true. So how does the site work?
The site was designed by programmer Carlos Holman, who says he wants the clothes designed by site users to be made in Europe and North America, rather than outsourcing them to cheaper countries with bad labour laws.
He says, “The cycle for fashion is too long and constrains creativity – it takes months from concept to product. Also, manufacturing skews heavily towards large runs – you have to make thousands of the same thing.”
With Bombsheller, the logic runs, you prevent waste by only making exactly as much as you need, and reduce costs.
The company prides itself on only making what’s ordered – nothing’s lying around waiting to be bought – and by employing seamstresses who are paid “100 times as much as a factory worker in Bangladesh,” according to Holman.
With fashion getting faster – most couture houses debut four collections a year, and high street stores are expected to have copies available almost immediately – huge waste and cost-cutting are gigantic problems. The tragic collapse of a factory in Bangladesh showed just how poorly regulated some bits of fast fashion are.
At the moment, Bombsheller only sells personalised leggings – but soon you could have a dress designed and cut to your measurements, delivered to your door.
A bit like having a personal seamstress on hand. How very Downton Abbey.
Image: Bombsheller.