AMPR Party Shenanigans...

            Dean Sunshine in 'that' hilarious tee shirt and Jenny Bannister in monochromatic ensemble

With a plethora of Christmas parties last year to experience I thought I'd show you one that I was lucky enough to attend that was a real hoot! The AMPR (PR Agency) Christmas party is always fun and hosted by the co owners Charlie Goldsmith and the stunning soon to be mum again Sarah Gale. AMPR are one of the top fashion PR agencies in Australia with many high profile clients including Australian department store David Jones and the upcoming Virgin Australia Melbourne Fashion Festival (VAMFF). I went along with my friend & co host of Fashion Torque Jenny Bannister who executed the dress code ( Monochromatic) with aplomb in her one off Op Art ensemble. 
On arrival Jenny and I saw the outrageous and infamous artist Dean Sunshine in what I thought was the most hysterical tee shirt I'd ever seen ( see pic above), especially in a room full of PR's and bloggers!!!  
Jenny just had to have a photo with him! 

Monochromatic nails, fabric, shoes and accessories on AMPR's Sarah Gale and Jenny Bannister  

The only fashion writer worth following, the legendary Janice Breen Burns of VoxFrock.com.au doing her thing, well on Instagram at least!

Lots of notable folk about town were in attendance that night in quite the jovial mood, you might say raucous!  With the renaming and new major sponsor of the Melbourne Fashion Festival (Virgin Australia) it was a great chance to hear all about the festivals upcoming schedule of events with many of the VAMFF staff at the party including CEO Graeme Lewsey.  

Janice Breen Burns with Graeme Lewsey and Social Set Siren Suzanne Carbone

Always the life of the party milliner and fashion historian (not to mention prankster) Richard Nylon

Janice Breen Burns and Richard Nylon with a change of chapeu! 

Jenny and Moi 'being' monochromatic in a polaroid 

Big thanks to Sarah Gale, Charlie Goldsmith and the whole team from AMPR for a simply marvellous party.

A Greenhouse Fashion Show

Back in late September I was asked to put together (and host) an intimate fashion show by my fab friends John Flower and Michelle Shepherd who are directors of Hothouse Media & Events for their client QV Melbourne. It was to highlight the latest trends and fashion retailers at QV Melbourne for Spring/Summer and take place in the middle of the centre where they would create a beautiful greenhouse full of plants and flowers that evoked the spirit of the Hamptons in New York, designed by Liz from Flower Temple at QV.
When I first saw the space I was blown away, it was beyond beautiful. Liz and her team had created a magical floral greenhouse, perfect for a spring fashion show.
Thinking about sourcing the right outfits to fit this amazing space wasn't difficult as I knew we needed to show lots and lots of bold and wonderful colour. 

I along with my talented assistant Andi went about introducing ourselves to many of the fashion retailers and worked at getting the perfect cross section of all the fashion and footwear available at QV for many spring/summer looks.
As many people know I love vintage clothing and always like to integrate it into any of my projects if suitable. There is a great vintage store in QV called American Rag with a great owner/buyer who has a great eye and so they were Andi and my first stop. I also sourced from many of the other great stores including INCU (lots of great Karen Walker), MNG, Mossman and great shoes from Melissa.  

The lovely Chadwick models looking a little warmer

Come the first day and of course it poured with rain, so much so that our dressing & backstage area was flooded and poor Andi (who was running the backstage for me with about 3 dressers) couldn't start the show, add to that it was freezing cold and the wind had decided to really blow up our skirts!!! Not ideal for a Spring/Summer fashion show in a clear greenhouse with models wearing little summery dresses! 
What to do? Wait? Well yes and then in a strange (but quite normal for Melbourne weather) change the clouds parted and the sun came out and we had a lovely little Spring/Summer fashion show.

The night before our fashion show the great team at Hothouse Media & Events along with the QV Melbourne team created a fantastic opening party with  fashion presentation by fashion designer Jason Grech and Flower Temple for the QV Melbourne Spring/Summer season. 
I attended with one of my closest friends and the Make Up director of my fashion show Narelle Hall, of course there was a celebrity wall!     

The above pic is taken from the amazing Richard Nylon's Instagram showing the very talented stylist and friend Virginia Dowzer, Richard himself, Narelle Hall and myself enjoying a Spring champagne at the opening party. T'was a great night with a great mix of people! 

                                     The stunning Greenhouse at QV Melbourne

With Thanks to #QVMelbourne, #JohnFlower, #MichelleShepherd & #HHME team, #AndreaPlowman, #NarelleHall #ChadwickModels

Jerry Hall - Style Icon

                                                          Jerry Hall and a white jacket

So this is the second day of my relaunch of this blog and as I shared yesterday I want to give you a look at my work life and show you some of the highlights of my recent styling and creative direction projects. The following was not only a year highlight but a career one!

In September I had one of the most exciting styling opportunities, that was to work with the famous fashion icon, actress and model Jerry Hall. This opportunity would not have been possible without the help of a very talented and amazing friend Liza McLean who produced through her production company the theatrical vehicle Jerry Hall was brought to Melbourne for, 'The Graduate'.

I contacted Liza to see the possibility of Jerry wearing an Australian designed dress to the opening night of 'The Graduate'. Initially we didn't think we would have the opportunity to even have a moment with Jerry as her rehearsal schedule was so busy and that she would even want to wear a specific piece designed by an Australian designer. Things were not looking good and I thought this chance may slip away, many times they do with busy actresses and timings let alone the star even wanting too.

Phone calls went back and forth and finally we had a window of time that we could see Jerry only a day or two before the opening, and for an hour tops!  
I'd only mentioned to a few designers that I could be possibly styling Jerry Hall and hadn't even pulled the dresses. I flew into a frenzy of calls with many designer contacts and PR's I knew and managed to get a great selection of designer gowns and dresses I thought would be a perfect representation of Australian fashion design and talent to hopefully wow Jerry.    

                                                             The stunning Jerry Hall

I knew that I needed to include some designs from Melbourne's amazing Toni Maticevski and promptly called my friend Prasana Lee who is the in house Maticevski PR supremo and she told me that Toni would LOVE for the icon of fashion Jerry Hall to wear his designs and we quickly chose a few possible options. The only problem with this was that Prasana and Toni himself were about to leave for Paris in a day or two to show the collection and we couldn't find any actual dresses in Jerry's size at the studio! 
Hair pulling out time! I was envisaging taking about 5 dresses from Toni Maticevski to show Jerry along with nearly another 15 from other Australian designers, you can never have enough in my mind. Also we are talking JERRY HALL here, I HAD TO to get exactly the right dress she would love! The phone call came from Prasana just before jumping on a plane to Paris, 
'Philip we have one dress in Jerry's size!' Double hair pulling out time!
'We'll take it!!!" I said.

                                                               Designer Toni Maticevski

So the fitting time came and I was asked to make it as simple and smooth with the least amount of fuss when going to Jerry's suite at the Crown Towers Hotel accompanied by Liza. Jerry answered the door herself in black skinny jeans and a black knit sweater, no make up and a beaming smile. She was gorgeous and so welcoming, did I say gorgeous? Jerry is 57 and has had 4 children, not to mention being married to Mick Jagger for many years and looks like a woman 20 years younger, she does not look like many women you have seen on television or the movies that have had 'work done' she looks completely natural, beautiful. 
Ever mindful of the limited time we had I lay the gowns and dresses out and started to offer up my preferred choices gathered from all the best Australian designers, including the Toni Maticevski. 
Jerry slipped into many beautiful silk gowns and dresses in wonderful colours, right then I remembered many iconic images of Jerry walking the runways of Europe in YSL, Chanel and Dior back in the early 80's looking stunning as she did in these Australian designs. 
The only problem was Jerry wasn't feeling them, she liked them but didn't think they were right for the opening night of 'The Graduate'. Not what a stylist wants to hear, with a fear that this could all go wrong I grabbed the solitary Toni Maticevski dress (knee length and shorter than the rest) and waited while she tried it on…
In that famous Texan drawl she said 'I love it, this is the one! No hair pulling out!
She stepped out of the dressing area and both Liza and I smiled and agreed it was the one. 
Very happy stylist. 

                                                       The Toni Maticevski dress in the look book

Producer Liza McLean introducing Jerry Hall (in the dress) and the cast of 'The Graduate' at the Opening Night Party

                                                             Designer Alexi Freeman

As a bit of a side note, the day I was to have the fitting with Jerry Hall I was returning some clothing to Melbourne designer Alexi Freeman and I thought I would ask him if he would be interested in giving a piece of his clothing to Jerry Hall, I thought it would be great as a designer to claim someone so famous as a client. Alexi was great and offered up quite a few options which I included in my selection.
In the fitting I brought out one of the pieces Alexi had supplied, a black tulle dress with printed slip. I wasn't sure it was Jerry's style but she jumped at the chance to try it on, she loved it and also loved when I mentioned Alexi was a great emerging designer. It looked fantastic on her and even though she thought the printed slip too short for her she told me that she would give it to her daughter Georgia May Jagger, probably the hottest model in Europe and face of cosmetic company Rimmel. 
Of course when I informed Alexi he was beyond excited to have both Jerry Hall and Georgia May Jagger wearing his creations.
The dress of Alexi Freeman's was from the collection below.  

I thoroughly enjoyed my time styling Jerry Hall and thank her for making the experience so pleasurable as well as a big thank you to Liza McLean for making it possible and for the invitation to opening night of 'The Graduate' and after party. Myself and my date for the night my friend and co host of Fashion Torque Jenny Bannister enjoyed the show immensely and I got to chat with Jerry after the show about the dress and wearing an Australian designer as well as get a few photos with her as you can see. 

                                     
                                                       My date Jenny Bannister and I


With thanks to Liza McLean, Toni Maticevska, Prasana Lee, Alexi Freeman 

A New Year A New Name

PHILIP BOON PRESENTS:
After much thought and inner argument I have decided to re launch my blog with a different title that I think reflects what I have been doing for the last few years but also the path I intend to follow for the future. So now this blog will be called PHILIP BOON PRESENTS: and will showcase my career and many projects both past, present and future. 
I hope you may enjoy seeing some of the life I have been lucky to create for myself in fashion, style and design. I hope to share with you the exciting projects and plans I have for the future as well as some of the behind the scenes experiences I have already brought you in this blogs past incarnation which I will continue to cover. 
So, here we are 2014! I already have a lot of projects that are more than in the planning and working on a lot of other 'like to do' things for the year. 
This year I am personally moving into a new part of my life and I'm excited for the future, we all really need to be thankful for all we already have and the accomplishments we have experienced in our life while learning from those things that haven't worked, its ok to make mistakes and not have everything go our way, it makes us stronger and eventually we move on from them and hopefully grow. So here's to a year of growth and success and even a mistake or two, after all we are all human even those in the supposedly glamorous world of fashion…

  

Snak Time

 In the current issue of Rolling Stone magazine Australia you will see quite a conceptual editorial spread on Australian radio station Triple J's 'Unearthed' competition winners 'Snakadaktal', an emerging band that is headed for top of the charts.
But let's backtrack, Photographer John Tsiavis came to me a while back to discuss styling for this editorial and the highly conceptualised vision that he had been working on with the master creator of this idea, Nik Dimopoulos. After seeing Nik's amazing concept I jumped at the chance to be involved and loved the idea to work outside of the usual 'fashion' constraints that you deal with when shooting a fashion editorial. I myself had never worked with Rolling Stone before but have with John Tsiavis on many celebrity and fashion jobs (John has photographed Chris Lilley for the cover of Rolling Stone before)  and was excited to work with Nik Dimopoulos's concept, a unique editorial for this young and emerging band that was far from expected by not only the band but also by the band's management and the magazine!
We stuck to Nik's vision and powered through a shoot that is probably best explained by looking at the above image of the band that represents a dinosaur's face...squint your eyes and you will see the eyes, teeth and tongue of a dinosaur!
Clothing credits above are: Boys jackets from Strateas Carlucci, Shirts were vintage. On Phoebe: Top by Alpha 60, Trousers from Neo Dia and shoes from Zomp.  

 

Continuing on the conceptual vibe the above image of two band members represents milk from a cow's udder, no really it does! Clothing credits: Left, Alpha 60 top, Strateas Carlucci trousers.
Right All by Alpha 60

Now you probably have already realised that the above image has something to do with birds but to help you out it represents Magpies eating worms! 'Well of course' I can hear you saying!
Nik's amazing concept was totally embraced by the band who were great to work with.

 The great joy of working on editorial jobs like this is the chance to include many amazing artists and designers and even with my dodgy photos you can see at the back of the above image the dress that Phoebe is wearing has a taxidermy bird on it created by Fionnbharr Pfeiffer!
Talking of birds, the concept was about birds, a parrot to be exact.
All other clothing by the wonderful designers at Limedrop.

 The only female in the band, the beautiful Phoebe wears mohair top, trousers and breastplate by Neo Dia with gold cuffs by Madam Virtue & Co in a image inspired by underwater and fish.

 So many hands make light work or should I say concepts come to fruition and I couldn't have done it without my wonderful assistant Glenda Tarle who did more than steam up a treat on the shoot.
Big thanks Glenda for all your work on an amazing shoot.

The creative Fionnbharr Pfeiffer working on the scene making the 'worms' look just so!
Please check out more of Fionnbharr's work on his website fionnbharrpfeiffer.com

 Quite an unusual image above, amazing what you can do with a few balloons!

 Two of the boys from Snakadaktal getting used to wearing their white gloves and of course Strateas Carlucci leather jackets.

 Photographer John Tsiavis with Nik Dimopoulos working on the right choice of shots while some of the band look on with amusement at what they had actually been involved in!

Whitened faces helped add to the 'toothlike' appearance of the band before fifth member Phoebe came into add the tongue to the dinosaurs face.
A BIG thank you to Photographer John Tsiavis and Creative Director Nik Dimopoulos for allowing me to be involved with this shoot and to Make Up Artist Kim Tavares and my assistant Glenda Tarle thank you for your talents and great work.
Please go out and purchase a copy of the September issue of Rolling Stone Australia to check out the whole editorial of a band that you are sure to hear a lot more from in the future.

Photographer John Tsiavis
Creative Director Nik Dimopoulos
Stylist Philip Boon
Assistant Stylist Glenda Tarle
Make Up/Hair Kim Tavares
Talent Snakadaktal

A Darling Magpie

 To continue my pledge to show you what I've been up to for the last year or so I thought I'd post an editorial I styled last year for London magazine 'Magpie Darling' photographed by She is Frank.
All the clothing I selected was from Melbourne's ultimate high fashion store Madam Virtue & Co owned by my wonderful friends JC Lloyd Southwell D'Anvers and Dean Hewitt who hand select and custom design the amazing creations they sell in their salon like store.
The above dress and neck piece was designed by JC which I'm sure you will agree is shockingly vibrant in purple silk.

 The location was an amazing home that had changed little since the late 1950's that photographer Natasha Frank (She is Frank) had found and was a beautiful contrast to the highly saturated colour of the clothing. Above the dress is by Lanvin from Madam Virtue & Co as is the neck piece, shoes are from Zomp.

The above sequined dress is by Madam Virtue & Co as is the neck piece.

The shots in this post are only three from the editorial, more can be seen on Magpie Darlings website in their Back Issue pages www.magpiedarling.com

Photographer She is Frank
Stylist Philip Boon
Stylists Assistant Alysha Roe
Make Up/Hair Megan Harrison
Model Bridget

Andrej Pejic - Never seen editorial!

 Last year I was asked to style a shoot by photographer Susan Grdunac. The subject was probably the  fashion industry's most talked about model, Andrej Pejic.
For whatever reason the shots you see here have never been seen by the public and I think they should be, a few magazines were approached but nothing eventuated so they remain (until now) unseen.
I jumped at the chance to style a shoot of the wonderful Andrej who has confronted and wowed both the fashion world and the media, he challenges our notions of what masculine and feminine fashion is and creates a storm of controversy in our ever conservative world, which I love!
I didn't want to style Andrej in a completely feminine way, as he had been styled many times before but wanted to create a sense of masculinity that still was gender neutral. The photographer and I both wanted to use a female model too that represented a contrast but that had the same gender neutral aesthetic.
Andrej in all the shots shows both strength and vulnerability which of course shows why he continues to be a great model and along side the female model at times shows a more masculine style while still being androgynous.
The above shot is Aurelio Costarella corset and knickerbockers with vintage fur by Linda Black.

 Andrej can model Menswear wonderfully and the above shot he creates a classic menswear pose.
Andrej wears Neo Dia jacket and Trimapee trousers

 You can see in the above shot that Andrej mixes the strong/vulnerable with female model Stephanie.
Andrej wears Comme De Garcon jacket from Madam Virtue & Co, trousers and shoes from Trimapee.
Stephanie wears Vintage Romeo Gigli suit from Madam Virtue & Co and shoes from Zomp.

 This is a behind the scenes shot (hence the blur) with Andrej wearing Neo Dia cape, Trimapee shirt/shoes and Leopold jeans

 I love this quick snapshot of Andrej and Stephanie in vintage furs by Linda Black that shows intimacy and connection.

 The beautiful make up and hair in this shoot was masterfully put together by my fantastic friend Nigel Stanislaus who I've worked with for years and who is Maybelline NY Australia's Make Up Director.
We all had an amazing time working with Andrej and post shoot we took some time for a dress up, above Nigel and Andrej strike a pose trying on some of the vintage furs I'd sourced from Linda Black

 As you may know reading this blog I like myself a bit of vintage fur so Andrej and I rocked the vintage arctic fox together post shoot!

I loved working with the down to earth and super friendly Andrej Pejic and found him to be a true professional, no request was too much. The leather trench coat he is wearing is by Leopold, and my hat
I look forward to seeing more of his work and the way I think he will recreate himself in years to come.
There are more wonderful images of Andrej in this shoot that are still to be seen so I welcome any publications that may want to feature this shoot.

Model Andrej Pejic
Photographer Susan Grdunac
Stylist Philip Boon
Make Up Nigel Stanislaus
Hair James Nicholson
Stylist Assistant Alysha Roe

Clothing Credits
Madam Virtue & Co
Aurelio Costarella
Leopold
Neo Dia
Linda Black
Trimapee