>> Vogue Australia Erases Abbey Lee Kershaw, Catherine McNeil's Nipple Piercings —While British lawmakers are considering banning airbrushing, Vogue Australia made quick use of Photoshop within its 50th anniversary September 2009 issue.  Greg Kadel photographed Abbey Lee Kershaw and Catherine McNeil topless for an editorial entitled "Come As You Are," capturing the models with their nipple piercings in plain view, but in the magazine, the jewelry has been erased — Frockwriter has photo evidence.  Funnily enough, however, they kept Abbey Lee's piercing untouched in a less close up shot. [Frockwriter (NSFW)]

>> Over the weekend, a "strongly worded letter" from Vogue UK's Alexandra Shulman "sent to scores of designers in Europe and America" — including Prada, Versace, Yves Saint Laurent, and Chanel — was leaked to the Times UK in what some are calling a publicity stunt.

In the letter, Shulman exhumed the size zero fight, accusing designers of an "increasingly disturbing" practice of sending fashion magazines "minuscule" clothes for photo shoots. "I am finding that the feedback from my readers and the general feeling in the UK is that people don't really want to see such thin girls."

She noted that the samples sent were becoming "substantially smaller": "Nowadays, I often ask the photographers to retouch to make the models appear larger." Furthermore, she wrote: "We have now reached a point where many of the sample sizes don't comfortably fit even the established star models. Instead, we are having to use girls with jutting bones and no breasts or hips, to fit them."

So who's with her? »

>> THE MODELIZER —Those new faces looking to break through shouldn't give up just yet — two catwalk veterans, Abbey Lee Kershaw and Ali Michael, are leaving their usual spots at New York Fashion Week vacant this time around.  Abbey Lee, who's appearing on the March 2009 cover of Vogue Australia instead, is sitting Fashion Week out due to knee surgery (no word on whether she'll make it to Europe), and the cause for Ali's absence is unknown — big campaign, maybe? [Fashionista, Fashionista]