By Melissa Hoyer
March 11, 2007 12:00
Article from: The Daily TelegraphAS soon as the influential New York Times tags a model “the one to watch” and the same girl goes on to shine in 35 runway shows in Paris and Milan, she is definitely a star on the rise.

Seventeen-year-old Australian model Catherine McNeil has been already swept up in the uber model world after her first season on the fashion-show circuit.

Looking wholesome and romantic, Catherine has captured a new, more glamorous zeitgeist.

And it’s unlike the wide-set-eyed alien look personified and made famous by the other Aussie cutie, Gemma Ward.

Catherine, who hails from the Queensland suburb of Logan, had aspirations to be a mechanic, but chances are she has made more money in three weeks than she would have from her aborted three-year apprenticeship.

“I didn’t really like school, so I had plans to be a mechanic because I really love machines,” the heavy metal-loving teen told me yesterday from New York.

“I started modelling when I won the 2003 Girlfriend Magazine Model Search while I was still at school.

“I lived between Brisbane and the Gold Coast and I came down to Sydney for Fashion Week and some advertising campaigns.”

At the start of 2006 Catherine decided to refocus her life and move to Sydney with the Chic model agency.

She appeared in campaigns for Zimmerman, Cue, Simona, Alannah Hill, Myer, Colorado and Myer as well as appearing in editorials for Vogue, Harper’s and Madison.

“This January, I went with my grandmother to New York to meet with the agency, Next, and soon after I was flown to Paris to meet with (revered photographer) Mario Testino,” Catherine said.

“I’ve been travelling so much my four-year-old sister thinks I live at the airport.”

Mario booked Catherine immediately for D&G and Hugo Boss campaigns and put her under a six-month exclusive editorial contract.

It was then off to Milan, where she made her international catwalk debut to work runway shows for Roberto Cavalli, Etro, Pucci, Versace and Fendi before heading to Paris for Dior, Valentino, Stella McCartney, Christian Lacroix, Yves Saint Laurent, Alexander McQueen, Chanel and Balenciaga.

Phew!

“It became a bit of blur doing so many shows, but if there was one designer I really liked wearing it was Stella McCartney,” Catherine said.

Catherine was also the first model to appear on Riccardo Tisci’s show for Givenchy, one of the Paris season’s hottest tickets.

“I live for that girl,” boasted Lauren Goodman, the fashion director of Conde Nast’s Domino magazine, a sentiment embraced by Brana Wolf of US Harper’s Bazaar.

“She’s so different from the Russians,” Ms Wolf told the New York Times.

“She’s tall, for one thing, and at the moment there’s a tall-girl trend, and Ms McNeil also walks well,” Ms Wolf added.

Just watch out for more of Our Catherine.

Cosmetic Barbie

BARBIE has been a sort-of fashion princess for more than four decades, having been a muse for the creme de la creme of fashion designers, including Christian Dior, Versace, Giorgio Armani and Badgley Mischka.

Now, the Barbie Loves MAC (as in make-up) collection will go on counter on March 16.

The collection includes a range of products in an assortment of modern pinks, intense eye colours in blue and green, and skin-perfecting pearlescent powders.

There’s even a limited edition MAC Barbie Doll, decked out in striped skinny pants tucked into over-the-knee boots, a sharply tailored jacket and flesh-tone top with a plunging neckline. Too funny.

Liquid Launch

A VERY smart idea from Henri Lloyd, the European lifestyle brand, who unveiled their Spring/Summer collection at the Audi Sydney Harbour Regatta – on board some mighty impressive vessels.

With the yachting spectacular of the regatta as a backdrop, Henri-Lloyd dazzled guests shore-side with their relaxed mix of wardrobe essentials and covetable resort chic.

A strong nautical influence was balanced with a new colour palette of butter, bark and blossom.

With guests served miniature gelato in the collections colour palette and the champagne flowing freely, the parade was crowned a real goodie by fashionistas and sea dogs alike.

Kellie Hush in Paris
March 8, 2007

Catherine McNeil at the Hermes show.

After New York Fashion Week, Fashion Police predicted Queensland model Catherine McNeil (picturedc) would be the face to watch this year. You couldn’t miss her in Milan and Paris. The 17-year-old was booked for more than 30 shows in two weeks including Missoni, Fendi, Versace, Viktor & Rolf, Dior, Balenciaga, Jean Paul Gaultier, Valentino, Christian Lacroix, Givenchy, Stella McCartney, Lanvin, Hermes and Chanel. Fashion Police spoke to McNeil briefly between shows and she was a little overwhelmed and exhausted by her schedule. “It’s just so full on. At the moment I don’t have any time, unless it is late at night.” McNeil is signed with Next models in New York. An IMG models staffer predicts McNeil could be the next Elle Macpherson “as long as she’s not over-exposed. The fashion industry likes a bit of exclusivity.”

http://www.smh.com.au/news/fashion-police/look-out-elle/2007/03/06/1173166700236.html

PYTHAGORAS is hardly the first name that comes to mind when you think about beauty. Yet it turns out that a lot about how we think about the subject dates to a Greek mathematician who lived in the sixth century B.C.

The Pythagorean term for beauty was “cosmos,” as the writer John Armstrong pointed out in his 2005 book, “The Secret Power of Beauty,” and Pythagoras, as Mr. Armstrong wrote, had the beguiling notion that the cosmos “is the central explanatory concept we require for understanding pretty much everything and anything.”

Not much has changed in 2,500 years, either in terms of reality or perception. Beauty still tends to trump brains, skill, competence and, in the case of Lindsay Lohan, even the barest requirements for rational behavior. Beauty maintains its ability to bewitch viewers. Beauty has the power to send people off the rails.

Most of us instinctively seem to hang on to a Pythagorean concept of beauty derived from simple mathematical proportions and a formula typically exemplified using the face of Marilyn Monroe. A forehead should be as high as the nose is long. The space between nostrils and upper lip should be a third the length of the nose. And so on.

As old ideas go, it’s a fine one. Yet spend enough time around the people who control the beauty business and you soon spot the flaws in the thinking. You see pretty starkly how notions of what constitutes beauty are tweaked and how much those alterations are subject to all kinds of shifts in which direction the cultural winds blow.