This is not a blog

Hi everyone!

Well, here I am in Singapore and having a great time shooting with some of the country's best photographers! This is my third annual Asian Tour and although I somehow managed to live out of a mini suitcase for the last two years, this year I decided to treat myself  to bringing a big one and of course, instantly filled it and wondered how I ever managed with one half its size. It was so heavy that I ended up leaving my laptop at home to save the weight, so I'll just be using my little iPad for the next 5 weeks! I can't upload photos from it so I will probably save the blogging until I'm home In December :) There should be lots to talk about as I will have visited Cambodia, Kuala Lumpur, Hong Kong and Bangkok by then! Bangkok is more of a holiday, which I think I will need after the madness of the upcoming four weeks in four countries; I plan on spending lots of time in spas as well as doing a little shopping and seeing the sights.

In the meantime, I will be updating my Facebook (including sharing the photos that Asian photographers upload of me): facebook.com/AnitaDeBauch, Twitter (including retweeting those photos!): twitter.com/AnitaDeBauch, and my new Tumblr: AnitaDeBauch.tumblr.com, from which I will attempt to relay #ThrowbackThursday and #FetishFriday pictures in the forms of links to existing (free) web content. #MondayModelBiz has rather been put on the back burner as it seems that I have been so busy with my own "model biz" every Monday that I couldn't find time to write about it! I will get back to it, I promise, but until then I recommend reading the first part of my book, The Ugly Girl's Guide to Becoming a Model, for free on PinUpPixels.com.

That's all for now- join me on my social networking sites so we can stay in touch! I'm anxious to stay in contact...

Anita xxxx




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Team ADB Going for Gold!

Well, I just wrapped another two straight days of modelling for Jerry Ghionis' portraiture workshops at the lovely Bloomsbury Hotel in London. It was great to be working with the world's #1 wedding photographer again, catch up with Melissa and make some new friends :) I could REALLY use a month off to catch up with myself though, but it doesn't look like that will be happening anytime soon- I just finished making all my arrangements for this year's Asian Tour! I will be visiting Singapore, Hong Kong, Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur and possibly Jakarta over November and December! I am so excited to shoot at these exotic locations with great photographers that so few Western models have access to!

Goodness knows when I will find time to do my Christmas shopping, though! I love to shower my friends and family with all sorts of gifts over the holidays! I would love to figure out a way of doing the same thing to you..! Any ideas how (or what)?

I just got these photos back from my shoot with Rayment Kirby, a highly experienced photographer who I always love working with! He and his wife, Pru, are such fun people, and their hospitality is great too (we always shoot at their place). I have many a kooky diet preference but the main three things I try to stick to are NO land animals, NO cow's milk and NO white flour, purely for health and beauty reasons, and Pru always remembers and cooks us something nice for lunch <3

In my head I've been calling these "the golden girl pictures." The effect on the skin reminds me of the ads for Dior J'Adore perfume with Charlize Theron. Coincidentally, J'adore is my favourite perfume and I was actually wearing it while was posing for these photos- almost the only thing I was wearing! I did the styling ;)

Shoes are from Kurt Geiger!

Speaking of nudes, it looks like I might be producing my own nude 2013 calendar! At least, that's how the voting was looking, last time I checked! Please do treat me to your opinion on whether it should be a latex, sexy lingerie or nude themed calendar on Facebook!

FetishEyes produced an "Anita De Bauch Tribute" calendar for 2012 that was all heavy rubber, so I'm of half a mind to go for lingerie or nudes this year, but not if everyone is still hungry for more rubber ;) I want the calendars to be accessible to everyone so will exert all my power and influence to ensure that they cost no more than £5 each! Everyone deserves a little glamour and sexiness in their home or office to last the whole year through, am I right? If I could give them away, I would!

Love and kisses,

Anita xxxx




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So, this is what I got.

1)  News that a photo of me by Simon Gauduchon was selected to appear on Vogue.it on 12th December and may well be published in Italian Vogue magazine in 2012 :D

2)  Four days off in a row at my mother's house in the beautiful Somerset countryside with my family :)

Lilith and Dexter having their first Christmas <3 

3)  Christmas presents! I got some adorable ones this year, including the Sex and the City complete shoebox set from my brother, the iPad 2 in a baby pink leather case from my father and these gorgeous vintage china trios from my mother :)

The pink set is from the 1930s and the white is Victorian <3

I got lots of other lovely vintage inspiration for Christmas too, so I'll have plenty to watch while I'm experimenting with new hairstyles :D

The cover girl of Style Me Vintage looks familiar... anyone know who she is?

4)  Speedy stomach/ thigh/ arm toning courtesy of three Pilates sessions in a row on Christmas morning, Boxing Day and this morning ^_^

5)  Christmas food, my favourite! Turkey, potatoes, tons of veggies, my homebaked mince pies, clementines, sherry, cheese, red grapes, apples and plums, red wine, Be Good Christmas pudding with Alpro Soya cream, cinnamon-spiced hot chocolate, smoked salmon, champagne! <3

6)  Liam and I had an early gift exchanging session when I got home from KL on the night of the 21st December <3 I got him some JPG aftershave, a dark blue Kindle cover to match his trench coat and a watch, and he got me a fab selection of books to feed my little brain with :) Freud, Jung, the new Daniel Clowes and some Discworld books too, which I always love! I've already started reading Freud's analysis of Leonardo da Vinci and it's fascinating!

Genius #1 on Genius #2

I'm off to Exmouth for a shoot with a returning client tomorrow and then back home to London on 30th December, ready for my shoots on 2nd and 3rd January :)

According to my schedule, I then have a week off in London before a week's work at the SWPP Convention. If I don't get booked at the last minute then I will probably spend my week off having a big, therapeutic clear-out of all my stuff and donating a bunch to charity, getting post-Christmas beauty treatments, hitting the sales with Hannah Ashlea and maybe visiting an art gallery or two :)

I hope everyone had a great Christmas with their loved ones and is looking forward to NYE! :D

原宿: De Bauch does the Harajuku District, Tokyo!

I got the overnight flight from Tokyo back to KL yesterday for another shoot with Edwin Goh last night, my second shoot with him on this trip :) Here's one of the shots from the shoot we did in KL nearly six weeks ago, my first in Asia this year:

 Latex: Lady Lucie | Styling: me

I was half considering wearing this dress to the Harajuku district on Sunday morning until I actually arrived in Tokyo and realised it was far too chilly in December!

I've had a minor obsession with Harajuku street fashion since I started modelling and got my hands on a copy of this gorgeous photography book:

In fact, I found the unrestrained and entirely visual self-expression so inspiring that I started wanting to get photographed myself... the rest is history ;)

On Sunday I finally got to live my personal dream of seeing the Harajuku district for myself!

Entrance to Takeshita Street. It was like a small Japanese version of Camden Market :)

 The best-dressed girl in Harajuku! Those half-trainer, half-maiko platform shoes were everywhere. I'd never seen them before :D

 I thought that people were just wearing their pants really low until I saw these low-crotch trousers for sale!

Goth/ emo dudes who were a bit shy about being photographed but very sweet. Bless!

All I can say is that I am definitely going back to Tokyo next year if I possibly can. It's such a cool city with such a varied and fascinating culture!

Bangkok Airport

I have an hour to kill before the hotel taxi takes me back to the airport for my second attempt at flying to Tokyo :p And on the theme of airports, here are some snaps from Bangkok Airport, where I had to stay overnight on my way from Hong Kong to Singapore (no choice!).

Before I left Hong Kong, I had a great fashion shoot in the executive suite on the 81st floor of L'hotel Nina!

This is pretty much all you can do with a leather jacket in the Hong Kong heat ;p
Photographer: Teddy So | Styling: me

Then it was off to Bangkok Airport, to camp in Starbucks for approximately 17 hours before my flight to Singapore. I was too scared to go into town in case I got stuck in the floods :s I passed some of the time by photographing the many interesting examples of Thai arts, crafts and shrines in the airport:

 Some kind of massive sea serpent sculpture

 These are called "stilt shoes"- a bit like ballet heels, but without the heel! The female opera singer's feet go pointy-toe first down each leg into the tiny false feet at the bottom to make it look like they have had their feet bound in the traditional Chinese way, for certain opera roles. Walking in stilt shoes is considered a real skill!

 Beautiful male opera singer's costume

 Me next to a display in honour of "The Celebration on the Auspicious Occasion of His Majesty the King's 7th Cycle Birthday Anniversary"

 Cool (Buddhist?) shrine in the middle of the airport

 Closeup of the pretty flowers and offerings at the shrine

Statue of a mythical Thai giant (it was so big that even kneeling down on the floor, I could only fit it all into frame by tilting the camera at an angle!)

Must dash now, just got buzzed for my taxi- hopefully the next time I blog, it will be from TOKYO! :D

Yesterday’s News

So, my trip to Japan has been put off by two days :(

Yesterday, I was supposed to fly from Singapore to Kuala Lumpur and then change there for my flight to Tokyo, but my flight from Singapore was over an hour late arriving in KL, so I missed my connection, and the next flight to Tokyo isn’t until tomorrow, so I’m stuck in KL until then :(

The airline are putting me up in a hotel and having me fed/ watered/ taxi’d until then, but it’s still a bit annoying as I was looking forward to my Japanese holiday! I suppose they’re doing all they can.

And in my determination to find the silver lining, I have hit upon the fact that having two days to just roll back and forth between queen sized bed and hot bath in a half-decent hotel room is probably just what I need to recover from my cold, which started a couple of days ago. Apparently blowing your nose in public is incredibly rude in Japan and in my current state I wouldn’t be able to avoid doing it quite a lot.

So, thanks to my flight being delayed by two days, hopefully I will be able to make the most of Tokyo when I do finally get there and without needlessly offending anyone!

The other stitch in the silver lining is that I can catch up with my blogging :)

I seemed to blog almost every day last time I was in Singapore, when I was working roughly one day on, one day off, but this year I was working more or less 14 hour days every day, so I didn’t really have the chance to write and post photos anywhere other than Facebook and Twitter.

Now I can have a bit of a catch-up on my news from the last few days while listening to the call to prayer going on outside. I’ve heard it a lot on this trip but never get bored with hearing it again. Such a beautiful sound <3

Monday was my last shoot in Singapore: an awesomely cool fashion/ art video with a fabulous creative team led by Ukay Cheung, one of Singapore’s top fashion photographers, which I was really looking forward to! And it didn’t disappoint :D

I don’t want to give away too much before the video is released, but here is a “behind the scenes” snap that Ukay took!

 Trying not to look ill!

While in Singapore I also did two shoots in a building owned- and abandoned- by the Sultan of Brunei. Legend has it that it is haunted. I didn't see any ghosts, but it was a great post-apocalyptic type location to shoot in!

 The Sultan’s haunted house?

On Sunday I actually had a day off (!) in Singapore, and apart from doing a LOT of sleeping, I found time to do a little dress shopping and visit the Long Bar at the famous Raffles Hotel for a classic Singapore Sling at my “usual” table.

 Chin chin!

Cocktail enthusiasts may be interested to know that Raffles has introduced a range of different Slings:

I also revisited the Raffles landing site:

And I finally, finally got to go to the night safari, which I think I’ve been on about for weeks now! It was worth the wait. My favourites were the elephants and flamingos, but the lionesses having dinner and the flying foxes gliding from tree to tree came a close joint second! And all under a partially eclipsed orange moon <3

 Lionesses eating their meaty noms

 Flying fox planning his next move <3

I also thought these chairs in the café were really cool, haha.

And on the way back from the zoo, I got driven through the famous Orchard Road illuminations while I listened to Neon Blonde on my iPod. It was such a magical evening <3

That’s all for now, I think- I leave you in order to curl up alone in my big bed and make a two-pronged Western + Chinese medicine attack on this goddamn cold! I don’t actually feel ill in myself, but the symptoms are driving me crazy- they must be stopped!!

 Vicks throat sweets + Nin Jiom Pei Pa Koa, which is like an entire bottle of the honey you get in the middle of Strepsils. A real time-saver!

Nighty night, wherever you are and whatever time zone you’re in ;)

Last photo travel diary from Kuala Lumpur!

After the number of epic photo blogs I wrote on my last Asian tour, when I was just insanely overexcited about being in the East, I decided to try to squeeze my KL experiences into one blog ;)


13th November: Night Markets

I was surprisingly un-jetlagged when I got off the plane in KL after a 12 hour flight from London, in fact I was bursting with energy as a direct result of being forced to sit still for so long, so I went straight to the night markets to try some Malaysian food :)

 Sugar cane juice is my favourite! The stall holder just hacks one open with a machete and pours the juice out into a cup for you. Delicious!

 Signs that made me snigger then hurl. I'd definitely need a LOT of Guinness before eating deep-fried fishheads. You can see their eyes looking at you through the batter >.<

 This is called something like longon juice. It looks like a dirty tank full of dead fish but is actually fresh juice with pieces of fruit that you drink out of a bowl with a spoon. Very sweet and well worth trying :)

Seafood snacks, ready to be chargrilled!

14th November: Botanical Gardens and photo shoot

Went on my first big walk this morning to visit the Botanical Gardens and National Monument.

Long-necked turtle checking out my juice

 Lots of turtles sunbathing! <3

In the evening I had a photo shoot that went on until after midnight! Here's a "behind the scenes" snap of me wearing my Lady Lucie dress and a Playful Promises ring in the changing rooms :)

Finally managed to crawl into bed at 2.30 am!


15th November: Mosque and Museums

Sooo tired this morning but fuelled myself up with coffee and peanut butter to visit the National Museum, followed by the National Mosque and the Islamic Arts Museum. The latter was my favourite- I don't know if I've ever seen so many beautiful crafts in one place before. Every single item was absolutely dense with minute detail, whether it was painted onto paper or ceramics, carved into wood or embroidered onto textiles, and must have taken so long to create. The museum must have contained literally centuries' worth of hours of labour of love. Looking at that paired with the prehistoric people's jewellery and ornamentation in the National Museum, I was struck by humankind's seemingly hardwired and insatiable desire to see beauty and create it all around us, even if we're fighting off sabre tooth tigers, foreign invaders or a short life expectancy with one hand while we do it!

17th century Koran

18th century Chinese ladies' fashion. This outfit would not look out of place in London today!

Beautiful dome in the Islamic Art Museum's roof

Oh yeah, this is what I had to wear to go into the mosque :p The robe made me look pregnant but I would actually wear scarves like this on a daily basis if they weren't so closely identified with being religious. Comfy, versatile and saves doing your hair!

Inside the National Mosque

16th November: Orchids 

Got up, had four slices of peanut butter toast for breakfast, went back to bed, slept till lunchtime, then spent the afternoon in Kuala Lumpur's beautiful Orchid Garden. I love orchids <3

I also love exploring new cities on foot, which is fortunate as I must have clocked about 10 miles per day since I arrived in KL!

Look out for the monkeys (and the Malaysian drivers)!

17th November: photo shoot and National Gallery

After another great photo shoot this morning, I visited my favourite local greasy spoon for lunch, where you can get a huge bowl of the lushest rice or noodles I've ever tasted for the princely sum of £1.20 + 30p for mineral water :)

Ayam mee <3

I walked off my lunch by visiting the City Gallery and the Sze Ya Feng Shui Temple, the oldest Taoist temple in KL, built in 1864. Inside, the mood was pleasantly casual with people hanging out reading newspapers with their shoes on among the shrines and icons :)

I want one of these lampshades!!! I had a good hunt along Petaling Street in Chinatown to no avail, just came away with a new knock-off backpack for hiking some of my luggage around in :p

Now it's time to say goodbye to the guesthouse and jet off to Hong Kong tomorrow morning! Looking forward to my return to KL next month, though :)