PILOT cover-girl Georgia Fowler totally rocks Kate Sylvester’s Diamond Dogs campaign and lookbook. You can see the full lookbook here.

Creative Direction: Wayne Conway / Photography & Styling: Karen Inderbitzen-Waller

Georgia Fowler @ Clyne / Vincent Paunovic @ 62

The New York Times reports that: “After 3 seasons, Mad Men, the television series about advertising in the 1960s, has attained a level of popular-culture cachet. And now the show will enter a realm of the pop-culture pantheon that its creator, Matthew Weiner, says has surprised even him: Mattel plans to bring out versions of Barbie and Ken styled after 4 “Mad Men” characters.  The dolls are part of a premium-price collectors’ series for adults that Mattel calls the Barbie Fashion Model Collection.  The characters are Don Draper, the show’s leading man; his wife, Betty; his colleague at the Sterling Cooper agency, Roger Sterling; and Joan Holloway, the agency’s office manager who was Roger’s mistress.  That two dolls represent a relationship outside wedlock, and Don Draper’s propensity for adultery, may be firsts for the Barbie world since the brand’s introduction 5 decades ago. But for the sake of the Barbie image, her immersion in the “Mad Men” era will go only so far: The dolls come with period accessories like hats, overcoats, pearls and padded undergarments, but no cigarettes, ashtrays, martini glasses or cocktail shakers…” Full Story

Michael Lett has just published Mercy Mercer, the second monograph from Derek Henderson following the critically acclaimed The Terrible Boredom of Paradise in 2005.

“Mercy Mercer’s 128 colour photographs of the Waikato river, its neighbours, travelers – typically ‘New Zealand’ in flavour – are punctuated by unexpected moments that tell unofficial stories of New Zealand; tales of colonial invasion, poverty, immigration, boredom, and the ecological degradation of the landscape at the hands of commerce. Derek Henderson is one of New Zealand’s most renowned photographers. His photographs have been published in publications such as Wallpaper, Vogue, Russh, ID, Arena Homme Plus, The Independent and The Observer.  Mercy Mercer is a cloth-bound, hardcover book featuring over 100 colour photographs and a foreword by Jan Bryant, Head of Research at AUT School of Art and Design. Michael Lett will release a special edition of 100 books housed in a clam-shell box accompanied by a limited edition c-type photograph.”  

If you want to get a personally signed copy, Derek is doing a book signing at Parsons Bookshop, 26 Wellesley Street East. Friday 12 March from 5.30-7.00pm

And we are very excited that Derek is shooting a fashion editorial for the next issue of PILOT… can’t wait…..

Stolen Girlfriend’s Club sale yo…

Jaron Lanier’s You Are Not a Gadget has a very intriguing introduction. 

“It’s early in the twenty-first century, and that means that these words will mostly be read by nonpersons-automatons or numb mobs composed of people who are no longer acting as individuals. The words will be minced into atomised search-engine keywords within industrial cloud computing facilities located in remote, often secret locations around the world. The vast fanning out of the fates of these words will take place almost entirely in the lifeless world of pure information. Real human eyes will read these words in only a tiny minority of cases.”

Larner’s book is a powerful critique of web 2.0 culture and the dehumanising aspect of the wisdom of the crowd mentality. I don’t entirely agree with all of his conclusions, but this is essential reading. Especially for techno-optimists in need of a strong counter point / reality check…

Gawker reports that extreme-right-wing-nut-job-shock-jock Rush Limbaugh is selling his New York apartment. They have all the photos. Dear God. Have you ever seen anything more heinous? Well, I mean the study is kinda cool, sure. No? Probably not. That bedroom though? Wow. Speechless. Yours for a cool $13.95 million…

Dazed Digital have just posted a fantastic feature that covers all the collaborations between Lee McQueen and Dazed & Confused. The highlight has to be a conversation between David Bowie and McQueen from 1996.  It’s a very frank and very revealing interview from two very legendary Brits. You know it’s going to be fascinating to read when it begins with:

David Bowie: Are you gay and do you take drugs? (laughter)
Alexander McQueen: Yes, to both of them. (more laughter) 

Alexander McQueen: ”You can do naughty things in a mask without getting caught – you feel like a right little devil”. Keep reading.

Don’t forget folks that TODAY is Undies Monday at all Mag Nation stores. That means if you walk into any store in just your undies / bra they will give you a FREE magazine to the value of $50. That is a brilliant deal and the weather in Auckland is sunny and warm, so if it is good enough for Naomi Campbell on the cover of the new Love, then why not right? I just gave Ravi at Mag Nation a quick call to see how many takers they’d had, and he told me that so far they have had a few in both Sydney and Melbourne, one at Queen Street, but none in Ponsonby. None! Come on peeps, get in there… let us know what you get…

UPDATE: Mag Nation’s Twitter now says NZ is leading the Aussies… must be the nice weather in Auckland today…

At 3:34 am local time, today, February 27th, a devastating magnitude 8.8 earthquake struck Chile, one of the strongest earthquakes ever recorded. According to Chile’s interior minister, at least 214 people are now known to have been killed. The Tsunami warnings from around the world are just starting to be pulled back now. Twitter the best way to stay updated with fast-breaking accurate information…  

Amazing / Heartbreaking photos from Chile on Boston’s Big Picture.

 INTRODUCING JERKIN / THE SKINNY JEANZ MOVEMENT ON HEDISLIMANE.COM

“I just finished a report on this emerging movement I ended up being connected to called Jerking. It was born in Long Beach, Los Angeles, in late 2008 among black teenagers in high school. They call it the Skinny Jeans Movement and have songs like “I ROCK SKINNY.” They developed this creative community through social sites and found their style on the Net. The skinny look came first among them, then the music, inventing a broken-beat dance. As always, the music majors just spotted them and signed them one after the other. It is a really refreshing and joyful rap collateral movement. The project I did on jerking, jerk crews, and musicians will be online in a few days I guess, and Vogue Hommes Japan will publish some of it this month, as an introduction I guess. This movement is only starting, really, and it might spread over the global high school, with an avatar of my style in the broadband.”  Hedi Slimane for Style.com

Hedi just did his first interview in three years. It makes for, by turns, inspiring and scary reading. Essential nonetheless. Isaac has all the details