Don your finest Philip Treacy speculating fascinator and join us for a round of Le Fashionz Chat, won’t you?
Today we’re discussing one of fashion’s favourite muses – no, it’s not Loulou de La Falaise – we’re talking Australia’s Next Top Model (ANTM for the uninitiated), the most ‘high-fashion’ reality television show [oxymoron] ever, and their very recent hook up with IMG Models, a blue chip agency that boasts the likes of SEO BFFs Miranda Kerr, Karlie Kloss and Kate Upton on their books.
Since launching here six months ago, IMG have poached big names like Kerr from smaller agencies, giving cause for much industry #drama, speculation as to who they’d sign next, and other important things which are, no doubt, very important.
Now, according to Australia’s representative to the United Nations of Fashion, WWD, Patty Huntington (aka chic sleuth Frockwriter) IMG Models has announced that it will be dipping a toe into the tepid waters of Australian television by partnering with ANTM as the show’s mother agency, offering the winner of the show contracts within its various divisions (which presumably include: TV, modelling, and modelling on TV).
Earlier this week, the Jesus Christ of Clotheshorses, Gemma Ward (pictured above with Erin Wasson’s Side-Boob), announced that she too would be partnering with IMG Models in a move that has delighted both followers of the industry and people with eyes and hearts everywhere.
Before it was leaked via earpiece that Jen Hawkins would be taking on the accursed role of ANTM’s host, it seemed unlikely – although not impossible – that Ward would be up for the role, or would be in any way affiliated with a program that has about as much luck with hosts as a production of a certain Scottish play that dare not speak its name. Seeing as Ward has been in the process of quite a successful transition into a career on both the stage and in films, any serious affiliation with the program seemed unlikely. The same was also said of Kerr, who was touted by Foxtel as being up for consideration but, let’s face it, has bigger Thai fish to steam in “a scrumptious zesty dressing of intermingling tamari, ginger and lime juice for extra va-va-va-voom.”
However, now the two are signed with the same agency that boasts television and modelling divisions (don’t forget the modelling on television division), it seems more likely that the two will eventually conflate at some point during the show’s hallowed return to screens later this year.
Who knows what the cachet of either supermodel could do for the profile of the show; that is, for no less than $10,000 a day? Gemma Ward, that’s who.
Photo by Evan Agostini via Getty
via WWD
