Five-Five in Socks: Zoe Cross (a short film)

Video by Shinya Dalby | Words by Derek Rielly

From Stab issue 73: Let’s dispense with any formality and step exactly into the scene before you. It is a fire escape riveted and bolted onto the backside of an abandoned and marked for destruction RSL club that is kept breathing, if briefly, with a gymnasium and jiujitsu school. It faces almost due west, which at this point in the late afternoon, casts a warm glow on the collection of photographer with assistants, a filmer and the former stylist and hair and makeup gal for the Stones, Mr Nicholas X Morley (we’re honoured!).

Zoe strolls into the scene straight off a plane from Tweed Heads where she lives with her parents and four brothers. She is a precocious teenager who recently gave up regular high school preferring the freedom of an online school. This is important when your game is modelling and, lately, Zoe has been running hither and thither for photo shoots.

From crown to toenail, we see a salad of perfect genes (British!), five-feet five in her striped American Apparel socks. If we dispensed any formality at the start of the story, none, certainly, exists in the bright world that Zoe Cross inhabits, a world of Harry Potter books, clean sand, friendly dogs, sea vistas and smiling faces. She dances and laughs and talks in a very amusing and natural manner…

You have, most certainly, already dined on the photographs from this shoot. But just in case, here is a doorway.