Voxbullets
Short-to-middling post: allow 4 minutes read time
PARTY TOWN
Melbourne, for those resident under rocks recently, is a hotbed of hedonist kneezups. It’s Party Town Down South, particularly in the CBD’s swankish Emporium mall where battalions of flutewaving A-listers have gathered near-nightly to celebrate another newly-popped shop, then another, and another, and…The party’s not stopped at the Bourke/Lonsdale block either. A tramstop or three up the other end of town (saves the heels and ludicrous parking fees), Parisien Collins Street has also rocked for months, most recently at Dolce & Gabbana for the puzzling personal appearance of Domenico His Royal Self and, this week, the launch of interim digs for Phoenix-esque restaurant icon The Stokehouse in Alfred Place (site of the old Comme). Out of town, the beat also goes on, and on, and on, in our Significant ‘Burbs. Buckets of bubbles, truckloads of can-apes, mwah-kissy kneezup after mwah-kissy kneezup. Six solid months of this joyous five-star revelry and we are royally pooped, Dear Voxfrockers, prone on occasions, to gaze balefully at the stream of fresh stiffies slipped through our letter-slot. However.
HOWEVER!
We rally for you Dear Ones! A short respite, a nice lie down, and we’re frocked up and back, ready to broach the velvet ropes at Melbourne’s creamiest, quirkiest kneezups again! And, we’ll keep flipping our frivolous reports to Instagram, Twitter and our Facebook sub-site for your entertainment and vital education. Click on us! Watch next week, for instance, for our report of the breathbated re-opening of Marais. The iconic retail font of McQueen, Balenciaga, Celine, Givenchy, Lanvin, Owens, et. al., is racking at 73 Bourke Street as we speak and we’ll be there, for you, when the first flush of fashionistocrats swarms in.
MEANWHILE
Meanwhile! The remainder of today’s shrunk-for-speed Voxbullets are brought to you by Quieter Times; curling into a darkened cinema for transportation back to bewildering, brutal adolescence in Palo Alto, browsing for exotic arty fashion treasures in Maliparmi, breathing in the clean, perfectly perfect New-Yorkian calm of classic style and modernity at Brooks Brothers and finally, thanking the Voxfrockers for locating the two best transeasonal bootlets – ever – on your royal behalf. Let’s get on with it…
Gia Coppola Source: www.elle.com
PALO ALTO – UNMISSABLE
Gia Coppola, 27, above, directed this cutting, delicate study of teen-angst and Voxfrock slipped, with some trepidation, into the dark of Melbourne’s Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI) for a preview. Miss Coppola is the neice of our filmic heroine Sophia and grand-daughter of the legendary one-hit-wonder, Frances Ford. This is her directorial debut. But, we had also read in an interview published just as Palo Alto was wowing the 70th Venice International film festival late last year, that Miss Coppola was at pains to explain her relatives had little-to-no influence on this adaptation of James Franco’s tragi-romantic-excruciating short-story collection about teen life. Why not? (We hear you ask; and that was our reaction precisely!) Why wouldn’t you milk the tender genius of Aunt (“The Virgin Suicides” “Somewhere”) Sophia? Why?
Well, as it happened, Miss Coppola’s high regard for her aunt apparently leaked by osmosis into her work. At least, that’s what we reckon. It’s there in the pure, pimpled normality of her mise en scene. It’s there in the slow, searching, intimate camera that pauses – just enough so you sink, disbelief wholly suspended, into the minutae of lives on screen – as characters breathe, think, worry, fizz with joy. Palo Alto is not your average teen flick but it does also present a groaning smorgasbord of cliches that have been hitched to a thousand generations of adolescents back to Plato: wild parentless parties, rabid sex, excessive drinking and subsequent vomitting, ridiculous testosteronic fights, awful estrogenic bitch sessions, bullying, cruelty, and that peculiarly intense, heartbreaking vulnerability we all remember from our purgatory between childhood and grownupness. There are more modern cliches, intuitively observed, among a small cast of adults: a loving but distracted mother and dope-raddled narcissistic stepfather (played brilliantly by Val Kilmer), a predatory paedophile teacher. The teens’ hunger and need for better role models is pivotal to the film and spectacularly unrequited. We loved Palo Alto and emerged from the dark in that rare, blinking and unnerved state that only occurs moments after a good truth-ringing film or book.
Emma Roberts
Palo Alto stars an ensemble of Hollywood offspring including Emma Roberts (neice of Julia, pictured above) and Jack Kilmer as well as James Franco, Nat Wolff, Zoe Levin, Claudia Levy and Olivia Croccicchia. Screenings start this Monday, June 2 at ACMI Cinema, Federation Square, Flinders Street, Melbourne, until Sunday 22 June. Bookings, click here
Maliparmi style.
MALIPARMI
This tricky Venetian cult brand picked Malvern, heartland of both high fashion and artyfarty fashion genres for its first Australian store after recent expansion into Paris, Antwerp, Kuwait and Mexico. Maliparma’s 14 outlets in Italy have a reputation for the offbeat womenswear (pictured above) designed by its avid-travelling owners, Marol Paresi and daughter, Annalisa Paresi. Their reverence for traditional crafts; exotic beading, dying and patterned weaving techniques, infuses a huge collection of outerwear and accessories that is absorbing to browse, like hunting for treasure. Its opening racks carry Euro winter including velvet ankle boots in red, green and purple ($479), richly coloured reversible wool coats ($799) and a range of wool, mohair, alpaca and cashmere knitwear from $269. Venetian furnishings, lighting and hand blown Nason Moretti glassware, and perfumes by Cortese Venezia round out the reasons for a quiet hour at Maliparmi, 1374 Malvern Road, Malvern, www.maliparmi.com.au
Brooks Brothers style
BROOKS BROTHERS
Melbourne’s own BB officially launched this week at – where else? – Emporium. Sydney’s temples to this iconic 195 year-old New York brand are already firing on all cylinders at Chatswood Chase and Martin Place. Brooks Brothers hooked up with Oroton Group to smooth its expansion to Australia. Asia Pacific general manager Andy Lew excitedly supervised the roll out which began in February with menswear collections racked in David Jones’ stores from Brisbane to Perth. “Brooks Brothers’ goal was to find a partner that would bring local expertise so we can provide the exceptional service, quality, style and value that the Australian consumer would expect,” he says. “We feel we have found that through our partnership with Oroton Group”. Voxfrock is certain that in certain circles gentlemen are crowing that their go-to brand of impeccable, luxury menswear is now withineasy reach. No more pesky seasonal schlepps across the globe to access the full Brooks Brothers collections in far-flung ports. In a further joyful bulletin for local ladies, especially those who are, according to BB, “inspired by the artists, intellectuals and jet-setters from the 1920s and 1950s who found themselves equally at home in Connecticut or the Cote d’Azure”, womenswear will also racked in the Melbourne store.
Now Melbourne and Sydney are up and running, Brooks Brothers plys its sophisticated sartorials (pictured from its current campaign, above) in more than 500 stores in 25 countries and there are more to come. Plans are underway to launch yet another flagship in Sydney CBD in July. Track them at www.brooksbrothers.com.au
TWO PERFECT BOOTLETS
Here you go; best two. Job done. Don’t bother to thank us…
The Mode Collective Ankle Strap bootlet
The Mode Collective Ankle Strap Bootie is a clever hybrid of ankle boot and day-to-cocktails high (11.5 cm) heel. It costs $299 on www.the modecollective.com and comes in a clever range of mono and duo-tones including a rather fetching black ponyskin though we prefer the versatility of this subtle matte and croc-stamped leather combo. Shop here
BOSS Womenswear’s Jodi Sandal, (main photo, top) is Voxfrock’s Dream Bootlet, a chic, precisely crafted rack of black or snake leather ribs on a flatteringly feminine heel with just the right radiant wattage in the glint of its hardware to look well classy. They cost $1599, not a common budget for the average Voxfrocker, let alone most A-list fashionistocrats, but we do have until September, their ETA in stores Australiawide, to put aside the necessaries. Keep track on www.hugoboss.com
Compiled by Janice Breen Burns jbb@voxfrock.com.au with Terry Carruthers info@voxfrock.com.au
