[caption id="attachment_418" align="aligncenter" width="320" caption="Jourdan Dunn (style.com)"]
[/caption]Just 18, Dunn was spotted two years ago in Primark (our kind of girl!) and has swiftly risen to the top - an all the more remarkable feat when you consider (as we have discussed ad nauseum on this blog) the still glaring lack of black models on the fashion scene.
Pretty amazing too when you consider that Dunn doesn't hold her tongue and make folks feel it's alright. After all, this is the girl who said:
"London's not a white city... so why should our catwalks be so white? I go to castings and see several black and Asian girls, then I get to the show and look around there's just me and maybe one other coloured face."
Congrats from Islandista!
In other islandista news, some publicist named Jonathan Hay has claimed ... nay boasted that he is the one behind the ugly Rihanna/Jay-Z affair rumours that swirled around the Barbadian pop star at the start of her career and still track her.
According to Hay, he did it on behalf of a producer friend Vada Nobles who was the man behind Rihanna's first hit 'Pon De Replay' so as to build buzz and interest around Rihanna and the song.
According to Hay:
At first nobody seemed to really feel the song so I started a publicity campaign single-handedly. The whole idea behind the campaign was to get Vada Nobles out there as a producer so that ultimately people would forget about his past lawsuit and conflict with Lauryn Hill on her album the Miseducation of Lauryn Hill.
Anyway, I sent the song to Jennifer Vineyard, my contact at MTV. She did me a favor and broke the story on Rihanna, “Pon De Replay” and Vada Nobles. Along with one of my partners, I then began to fabricate stories of Rihanna and Jay-Z, leaking false rumors to tabloids, working internet message boards, etc. We started to get an insane amount of media coverage very fast. There are so many things we did that people don’t even know about, not even Rihanna herself. She was completely unknown and I was paid by Vada Nobles to generate publicity. The mega Island Def Jam deal rumor, we fluffed and fabricated. Rihanna and Vada had no idea what I was doing behind the scenes, but my whole agenda was to get media for the song.
He goes on to say that "Rihanna had nothing to do with any of that nor did she know what we were doing. I was just trying to break the single and stay employed" and says he feels "awful" and looking back is "ashamed" because "there was zero integrity in that maneuver".
But he freely admits that "I was only thinking about the end result... gossip sells and even goes on to boast that "it worked" because "every artist needs a launching pad and there is nothing better than a good scandal to get the public's attention."
Hm. We all know how insidious the publicity game can be in showbiz and that things like this are not below publicists. But to start such a vicious rumour about a 16 year old girl without her even knowing? That is wrong.
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