Freja on Style.com

OK, the number of comments and e-mails that I've received telling me about this video probably means that you all want me to post it. So here it is:

Thanks to all who informed me of its existence! :) I saw it last week, but didn't think there was anything noteworthy enough to blog about. But I guess general consensus thought otherwise. All I can say is you are a very insistent, but very thoughtful bunch and I do appreciate it. It's comforting to know that if I ever miss anything Freja related, all you wonderful readers will keep me in the loop!

Anyway, like I was saying, there's nothing terribly new or revelatory in this video. It's just nice to get some new candid material every so often, and it's nice to have Style.com recognizing Freja. As time goes on, it seems like more and more fashion outlets are beginning to realize Freja's popularity, so she's definitely well on her way towards cementing her revered status as one of the industry's top contemporary model icons.

Freja seems a bit more demure and polite in this interview, but she comes across just as grounded and as approachable as ever. One of the things I like best about her is that she seems to have a really good head on her shoulders, as cliche as that sounds. Despite years in the industry and all her success, you really get the sense that Freja isn't that much different than she would have been if modeling had not found her. It's this grounded quality that draws fans to her and breeds their intense loyalty. Freja also displays a trademark confidence that we've come to know, but it's tempered by glimpses of a vulnerability. This push/pull is best summed up by this quote about walking for Prada:

"It was definitely nerve racking. I remember being really nervous before, but that's a feeling that goes away. You get used to it and now I've done so many shows. It's pretty simple. You just have to walk so.....it's not so much to get nervous about."

This is why fans love her. She's effortless, comforting, cool and relatable all at the same time.

Is the "Freja" the new "Rachel"?

Apparently Freja's current hairstyle is all the rage. Dubbed "The Freja" by The Irish Times, it's gaining notoriety in the UK as well:

"The haircut of the season is undoubtedly the Freja, after model du jour Freja Beha Erichsen. The fresh-faced Dane sums up the mood of the season with her choppy, laissez-faire, shoulder-length style, which is given definition and volume with layers and texture, and cut using a sharp-edged razor. It suits pretty much any face shape and doesn't take much upkeep."

I also got a tip recently from one of you lovely readers informing me about a piece in Grazia (not online unfortunately) also touting the "Freja" as the next big thing in hair care. (Thanks Natalie!)

Since when did her hair become a thing? I always just thought it was messy and disheveled because she was growing it out and couldn't be bothered to deal with it. It fits her casual, effortless, just throw on some jeans and a t-shirt look very well. So it's really hilarious to me that it's now apparently become a style that other people strive for. I mean, just go to sleep, wake up and voila! Oh the irony. Maybe "The Freja" is the next "The Rachel." Yes? Yes? Regardless of my condescension, this is just another example of how notable and recognizable Freja is becoming, perhaps even outside fashion circles. Cult personality model indeed.

On a somewhat related note in speaking of things I find hilarious, I'm sure you've all seen the recent pictures of Baptiste in short booty shorts out and about with Karl in St. Tropez. Well, Freja was with them too, but she opted for Balmain jeans. I guess there's only room for one pair of booty shorts in St. Tropez...

Even though there's really nothing notable about these pics, I'm just happy that Freja's still in Karl's good graces. We haven't seen any work from the two of them in a while. Instead Karl's been working a lot with Natasha, and it had me slightly worried. I know not everyone likes Karl, his photography, and the work he does with Chanel, but he's been a constant supporter of Freja and her career, even during 2008 when things weren't going quite as well. It's just nice to be able to rely on certain things and relationships when everything else in the world seems so tenuous and uncertain. (Hello upcoming mid-term elections, high unemployment rates, and the possibility of another recession.) So I hope this means we'll be seeing a new editorial or collaboration soon!

Image Credits: afashiontale.dk, hola.com, zimbio.com

Random Bits: Inspiration, Encounters and Candids

-Molly Girard Coonan and Alice Barlow, the two people behind new label Barlow, are just like us in that they find a source of inspiration in Freja. Her picture is apparently up on their inspiration board, and they told NY Mag's The Cut that they "like to mix in elements that are both masculine and sexy." Well, if you ask me they couldn't have picked a more perfect source for that type of inspiration.

-I came across a lovely (but oldish) Freja encounter. During the shooting of the editorial "Before the Fall" for Vogue UK August 2008, fashion intern Rebecca got to meet Freja and just recently posted about the experience (complete with pictures) on her blog. Here's a snippet of what she had to say:

"Anyway in between camera flashes and set manoeuvres I found myself, the overzealous intern, engrossed in conversation with Freja and mesmerised by how laid back she was. Personally, I was overwhelmed by the whole experience. I’d acquired my own chauffeur for the day to ferry me to and from the studio, I was immersed in a sea of designer shoes and garments that, no doubt, amounted to more than what I would earn in my life time and I had drinks, CHOCOLATE, and first class food on tap. Freja was, obviously, used to what I wasn’t! and seemed so happy to sit and chat with me about me – oh and tatoos. She has ‘Float’ scrawled across her neck amidst numerous other skin engravings. She informed me that she just floats through life – like I hadn’t noticed."

You can see the pictures over on her blog as I don't feel comfortable posting them on here because I really only came across them by chance.

-Lastly, here's a candid picture of Freja, Abbey Lee and Leigh Lezark back in May at the Chanel Cruise show that was held in St. Tropez. It's still slightly odd to see Freja wearing a "color" other than black. ;)

Image Credits: My Scan

In China

As some of you already know, Freja was spotted in China recently by some fans. Thanks to a kind e-mail I received from Freja fan Pauline (thank you so much!), I can tell you that the reason she's in China is because she's shooting the ad campaign for a Paris brand called Mo & Co (The site says the label was founded in Paris, but parts of the website are in Chinese and they're shooting the campaign in China. Go figure.)

According to firsthand accounts, Freja was kind and thoughtful, even going so far as to have a cup of water ready for the sleeping fan when he woke up on the flight. The picture below already appeared on tFS, but other pictures must remain unposted at the owner's request. If you read Chinese, I think you can find them somewhere at this address: t.sina.com/xuanzheng. Looks like the site requires registration though.

After a bit of a quiet spell, we're finally getting some new Freja news. Although, she's always been such a private person that I wouldn't take the quietness to mean that she hasn't been doing anything. If there's one thing she knows how to do, it's how to operate completely under the radar considering her level of status and fame within the industry and among fans.

Anyway, thanks again for the e-mail Pauline! And thanks to the fans in China for being so vigilant. Hopefully this is just the beginning of an eventful summer season!

Image Credits: t.sina.com/cn/xuanzheng

The Progression of a Moment

I think by now pretty much everyone has already seen these pictures taken by Donald J outside the Dolce & Gabbana show. After all, they were posted several times on tFS. So you might be asking yourself, "why the heck is she posting these now?"

Well, I got an e-mail from Donald J with the images (hello and thanks Donald!), which made me take a closer look at these pictures that I had previously only taken a cursory glance at. And what I saw was the progression of a moment, made all the more beautiful and forlorn because it shows an antagonistic juxtaposition of a personal moment against a very public situation. If for some reason you're unfamiliar with Donald J, please be sure to check out his tumblr and his facebook. He has some really beautiful candids up.

I guess these images struck me harder this time because I could see a narrative and context. I'd previously seen them in bits and pieces, posted and reposted, rendered away from their context and each other. But aggregated together like this in a series, these pictures become so interesting. Perhaps I'm alone in feeling this way, but I don't get as excited by candids anymore. I kind of feel like if you've seen one you've seen them all. Yes Freja looks nice, oh look she's wearing black, but that's about it.

But with these I see personal and public spheres in conflict. A moment between friends looks oddly strange set against the chaos taking place outside of a show. Models are just regular girls (granted, with amazing genes) yet they increasingly live under more scrutiny from people like you and me, perpetuated by blogs like this one. Some might argue that this is the inevitable result of (and riffing off of Walter Benjamin here) living in the age of digital reproduction. But I still don't think it's necessarily fair that we judge their private lives based on small moments captured by cameras. So when I look at this progression of a moment I see a microcosm of all the issues and conflicts that fame and recognition bring.

I'm not really sure where I'm going with this...if anywhere at all. I guess it's just important to be cognizant of the constructs we take part in. And it's also important to remember that any picture we see is nothing but a small fragment of time, separated from both it's past and future. If we're lucky we'll get a progression like this, giving us some more substance to chew on; but most of the time we're left in the dark. And the danger comes when we don't realize it.

Sorry if you think I'm being too "contrived," or if you think I'm just making all this shit up. I guess I am....but aren't we all? Frankly it's why this blog exists. It's a way to help me understand the why and the how, instead of just settling merely for the who, what, where and when.

Image Credits: donaldj.tumblr.com, facebook.com/DonaldJPhotography

St. Tropez - 8 Months Later

Last week WWD and Fashionologie told us that Karl and Heidi Mount would be in St. Tropez this week to work on another short film for the Chanel Cruise Collection set to show in May.

"He’s zooming down to Saint-Tropez to shoot a minimovie for Chanel’s cruise show on May 11. It will feature model Heidi Mount and French actor Pascal Greggory."

Well it turns out that Freja and a handful of other models are in St. Tropez too, presumably all working on that Chanel short film. Pictures have surfaced of Abbey Lee, Freja, Heidi Mount, Karolina Kurkova, Leigh Lezark and Magdalena Frackowiak all walking around in what I assume are looks from the upcoming Cruise show:

Curiously missing from Karl's crew is Baptiste. But perhaps he's still hard at work on that upcoming album. That's the only reason I can come up with for his absence at both last month's Chanel campaign shoot and this month's set in St. Tropez.

I have all my extremities and appendages crossed in the hopes that this film will be better and more culturally sensitive than the last Chanel short film that Karl did for the Paris-Shanghai Pre-Fall Collection. Not that we have much to go by from the pictures above, but things are looking good so far.

Oh, and as the title of this post says, Freja was in St. Tropez about 8 months ago if you can remember. She was there last August with Karl, but I really can't recall why.

It must be nice to be a part of Karl's entourage. Gotta wonder though--with the Cruise collection showing on May 11th, and most European air travel currently debilitated by a cloud of volcanic ash, will Freja, Karl, Heidi and co. just stay in St. Tropez for the rest of the month? And since Leigh and Karolina are also in the film (and not Chanel runway regulars), can we expect to see them walk the Cruise runway as well? Sometimes the more you know, the more you realize how much you don't know. Oh well. At least we know what Abbey, Freja, Heidi and Magdalena will be doing May 11th.

Image Credits: bauergriffin via VogueElle Addict @ tFS, fashionologie, plejada.pl via slow_hands @ tfS, WENN via ERIKIMISUN @ tFS

Smile

First of all, thanks to miwa for the comment letting us know that Freja made it to number 3 on FTV's First Face Countdown for F/W 10.11! The video isn't up on youtube yet, but I'm assuming it already aired on TV. And yes, according to miwa, Freja does talk. Well deserved top three spot for a great runway season five years into an already great career!

Secondly, I finally had time this past weekend to make some headway into my three ft tall magazine pile that has been gathering dust (and even more height) since the start of fashion week back in February. As I was thumbing through the February issue of US Harper's Bazaar I came across this lovely feature:

What do you know, models can smile. :) And when they do they look radiant, but also very young. Maybe that's why we don't usually see them doing so. No one wants to be reminded that most of these girls are only 16-18 years old.

No groundbreaking story here...just wanted to post this because I realize that I've never seen so many model smiles gathered into one place. Death stares and sucked-in cheeks are usually the norm. Also, I thought this was appropriate considering that this blog's namesake has one of the best smiles out there. And it's still a pretty rare occasion to see it in full force. The unamused expression from 1:22-1:33 in the video below is more like what we've come to expect:

Amazing how such a small movement of muscle can completely change the way a person looks. Recognize the girl on the left? No? That's Heloise Guerin, who I can barely recognize when she's grinning like that.

Anyway, with new campaign news breaking nearly every day, hopefully us fans will get something more to smile about soon.

Image Credits: My scans from the February 2010 issue of Harper's Bazaar

Cruisin

The FW shows are barely over and we already have news about Cruise Collections. According to Vogue.com:

"Lagerfeld is already at work on his next film, which will debut in St.-Tropez in May along with his [Chanel] cruise collection."

Chances are that Freja will walk. She hasn't missed a Chanel show in a long time, and she is the campaign girl for the third season in a row, fifth time over all. But I wonder who will be in the video? Perhaps Freja and Abbey since they're both staring in the FW campaign? Maybe Edita because she's been in all the past videos? (But she hasn't really been walking the Chanel runway recently.) Maybe Heidi? Baptiste for sure of course.

If Freja is in it, I just hope it's better than her last foray into acting. At least we know that she won't be asked to play a Chinese courtesan or peasant, so that's a start. Maybe with St. Tropez as the setting (and possibly inspiration?) we can expect a video of gorgeous models lounging around on a beautiful beach? Now that is a video that I can get behind 100%.

Speaking of Chanel, pictures of Karl, Freja and Abbey shooting the campaign have been all over blogs recently. But just in case you haven't seen them, here they are:

And tons more good ones here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/rachel_photo/
Plus a wonderful, detailed writeup here.

They were shooting on Wednesday and Thursday down in Soho on Orchard street apparently, so for all the New Yorkers out there, this is your best chance to do some model watching and Karl watching. Maybe you'll spot him drinking Diet Coke without his sunglasses on, or listening to one of his hundreds of iPods....

Interesting choice for the campaign setting too. I bet you all were expecting a cold locale considering the big iceberg at the show and all. But Karl wouldn't be that predictable. With a barn as his setting for the SS10 show, you'd think he would have made use of his Vermont country house again for the campaign. But instead, he went all the way to Argentina. Anyway, I'm very excited to see how this campaign turns out given the setting. A little reminiscent of the old Daria Chanel campaign with that last shot, non? And I'm anxious to see how Abbey will fare as a Chanel girl. She isn't an obvious choice; but then again, neither was Freja when she was picked and look at where she is now. Five campaigns and counting....

Image Credits: elleuk.com and ajchen.com. streetlevel.com, thelodownny.com, misschico.com, fringesocial.blogspot.com all via tFS member slow_hands

Closing Moments

This great candid shot comes to you courtesy of Bobby who runs the blog Fotovalise. He was kind and thoughtful enough to share this with me, and now he's letting me share it with you. If you love model candids you most definitely have to check out Fotovalise, especially since Bobby just posted some of his shots from Paris. Lots of models there that you'll recognize but also some that you might not, which I love. I feel like most photographers tend to ignore the lesser known models which is really a shame, but Bobby does a great job of capturing a wide and diverse swath of the fashion flock.

This picture of Freja impeccably captures her unbridled joy moments after finishing Miu Miu, her last show for the FW1011 runway season. Can't you just feel the relief and sense of accomplishment shining through on her face? The perfect picture of someone ready to celebrate, utterly at ease, and without a care in the world. Bobby has tons of more pictures like this one on his blog, including another one of Freja whom he likes to call the "mighty Freja Beha." No arguments there. It certainly takes a mighty model to walk 46 shows and put out 12 editorials in the span of 2 months. Thanks so much Bobby! Also, please respect his wishes and do not repost his pics at tFS. Thanks!

Anyway, to go along with the "final moment" of Freja's season captured above, I thought it would be fitting to post some final show moments from throughout the rest of the season. Sorry for all the themed posts recently....chalk it up to a by product of my humanities educated, tendency to search out broad, connecting concepts....

The final moments of a show, where all the girls come out in one last processional walk, serve as a functional last look for all the buyers and press sitting in the audience. Makes sense because it accords people the opportunity to solidify their ideas and discern the broader theme of a collection and a designer's vision. When captured, these moments make for beautiful pictures (check out the stunning location for Dries), and cute instances if you pay attention. Proof that it ain't over until the last girl steps off the catwalk.

So much of how we view shows is one look and one girl at a time, but the final runway promenade gives us the rare opportunity to see the total vision and complete cohesion. I love it even more in videos because you also get the see the looks from behind when the girls turn around to walk back. We wear clothes in 360 degrees and designers design clothes that way too. Pity that we can't see them that way on style.com as well. Maybe one day....

Another thing I love about these final runway moments is that we can see how all the girls compare to each other in terms of height. It's only when I look at these types of pictures that I remember things like Amanda Norgaard is only 5'8", and Karlie Kloss, Frida Gustavsson and Ylonkal Verheul are veritable giants who make other models look short.

Is anyone else as fascinated with model boards and final walk pictures as I am? Or am I kind of being weird here? I guess that to me, these type of things show us glimpses of fashion's inner workings, and I just love trying to figure how things work.

Image Credits: candid via Bobby at Fotovalise, cobrasnake, corbis, coutorture, fashionologie, style.it, vmagazine