Xtremefashion

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The 30-metre dress from Kenzo

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m i l l i o n a i r e FA S H I O N & B E A U T Y

Extreme fashion

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appeal What extremes can fashion go to, and why? In price, in popularity, in outrageousness, in bragvalue…Millionaire delved into the world of fashion to un-layer million-dollar dresses, chain-linked nails and almost impossible heels

text Shalini Seth

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Valentino Haute Couture Autumn-Winter 2006

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f you look suitably wide-eyed at any fashion show, chances are that your neighbour will gasp conspiratorily with you as one of the more impossible outfits – perhaps one that is both too high at the thigh and too low at the neck and with all sorts of cleavage staring out at you – comes on to the ramp, the racoon-eyed model, embodiment of heroin chic, teetering in high heels with a vase on her head: “Who’s going to wear that!” These whispers come from the sheer accessibility of the subject. After all, everyone wears clothes. And they are about the body beneath, which again draws universality of interest, so isn’t it meant to be more attractive as the end result? Is it surprising that everyone feels like an expert? If haute couture is to fashion what Beluga, Ossetra or Sevruga caviar is to food, one taste should transform you from a havenot. But it does not. It just leaves one baffled, when one is not dismissing it as mere clothes. But for those that do not, fashion is art, meant to shake your aesthetic sensibilities. They say it is about expression and

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communication, and reconstruction. If all the gossip is true and it is about spoilt brats, it is simply attention-seeking behaviour. Real fashion shocks. The rest is mere clothing. “Designers want to make a mark by doing something that is forward and extreme,” says Peter Dundas, the creative director of Emanuel Ungaro, who was in Dubai showing his collection at Dubai Fashion 2007, organised by the Dubai Shopping Festival under the patronage of Her Highness Sheikha Hind bint Maktoum bin Juma Al Maktoum, wife of His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice-President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai. Fashion, especially on the runway, is about extremes – whether in terms of cost, which can go into hundreds of thousands of dollars, or popularity that translates into waiting lists far beyond what the medical profession can aspire to, or man-hours spent on sending the model out in nails with 10,000 crystals handglued onto them. Extreme fashion is more than the sum of its parts. You get what your imagination sees.

the trend. But it was YSL that first dressed female models in man-tailored clothes in the Sixties and took care of clothing for the feminists with style. Fashion must be excessive, said Nathalie Rykiel, director of the Sonia Rykiel fashion group, calling models “the women who parade on the catwalk, the artistic vision of a creator... They don’t exist to speak of reality but to transcend it.” Creativity is not necessarily born of controversy. Sometimes, it can create it. And it is not limited to clothes. The runway or the ramp is a world of its own, its theatricality telling you what the designer had in mind when he crafted the dress. And everyone’s invited. Just last year, after Spain decreed that models with low body mass index would not be allowed on the ramp, Jean Paul Gaultier sent a 20-stone woman down the runway clad in lingerie, to project the idea that beauty is universal. Jan Nordstrom-Arnold, co-founder and style director of Creative Nail Design, spoke to Millionaire about the most outrageous nails she has ever done – which includes everything from military insignia created with liquid and power to go on nails complementing structured jackets, to a nail painted like an eye, complete with eyelashes. “We also did lips and there was a hole in one of the nails where she brought the hands to her mouth, took a puff and blew out smoke through nails painted like > Christian Lacroix at Dubai Fashion 2007

Fashion is art, meant to shake your aesthetic sensibilities. They say it is about expression and communication, and reconstructing. Real fashion shocks. The rest is mere clothing

WHO’S THE MOST CREATIVE? For those who see fashion as mere clothes, the fact that social revolutions, wars and recessions all conspire to bring the pieces together on the runway might be surprising. Now, when trouser suits for women are accepted in formal wardrobes, it might be difficult to credit Yves Saint Laurent with Ungaro milLIonairE

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For men, the splurge appeal of custom and made-to-measure suits is a draw. But it does not go into five figures yet. Brioni $6,000 Kiton $5,800 Canali $4,200 Bottega Veneta $3,800 Giorgio Armani $3,595 Ralph Lauren $3,295 Oxxford Clothes $3,000 Jay Kos $2,800 Issey Miyake $2,800

Creative Nail Design

lips. These are all handmade,” she says, searching her memory for more tales to recount. She then encapsulates the briefs that float around behind the scenes: “We did a show for Diago Benetti. The brief was – very skinny, very rich but she is a bitch. She has everything but she can scratch your eyes out. We brought in real 24-karat gold and made an almond-shaped leaf with the tip done in sterling silver. The nails were three inches long. You saw this claw on the bag that she was carrying. So if there was any confusion that this was a real bitch, the nails told the story.”

YOUR ATTENTION, PLEASE! If fashion is about headlines, why not grab them? Many artists have been accused of market savvy, and enough campaigns have made creative headlines. Peter Dundas, the Norwegian who showed his debut collection for Emanuel Ungaro only last year, talks about his most outrageous dress ever: “In my career, I have done a dress that wholesaled at €137,000. It was beaded by a French embroiderer, with additional feather embroidery. It was crocodile-pattern, almost like real skin. It was for a show and it took three weeks of constant embroidery.” So, did anyone wear it? He counters: “I don’t do a design that I cannot imagine one woman wearing it. But it has to be one.” If you see the catwalk as the home for impressions that you will take away with you, there is a make-or-break moment. Nicolas Dal Sasso, the press manager for Kenzo, revealed just before the show at Dubai Fashion 2007: “The most dramatic outfit is the one with roses printed all over. It took about 30 metres of material to make it. You can only get it on special order. It is a very dramatic dress, the inspiration for which came from the ‘Garden of Allah’, a movie made in 1936. The whole idea of the catwalk show came from a movie set, of a woman waiting for her lover.” Zac Posen has left his mark on the Barbie doll. The haute little number is priced at about $300.

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Models are the obvious props that get worse for the wear in the extreme world. They are asked to walk in ‘almost impossible’ high heels, and sent down the catwalk in a dress fashioned from razor-SHARP clam shells that can make legs bleed

m i l l i o n a i r e FA S H I O N & B E A U T Y

Money, acquisitive value, superlatives can all contribute to attention-grabbing. Who would not talk about “the world’s most expensive Dirndl dress” that was shown in Germany last September? The Cindrella frock is gemmed with 150,000 Swarovski jewels and is priced an outrageous €100,000. When Westwood and McLaren brought out models dressed in rubber, neon colours, ripped garments and safety pins, punk had arrived, punctuated with stories of grandmothers fainting at the appearance of the models. Madonna’s fame has much to do with Jean-Paul Gaultier, who put her in conical bras for her Blonde Ambition tour in 1990. He was also one of the first designers to promote underwear as outerwear in the late Eighties, with bra straps, corsets and frilly knickers all on show. The spiky bra made all the front pages and in 2001 it sold at auction for £14,000. But then it was also about acquisitive value of what Madonna wore, rather than what Gaultier designed.

MODELS IMPOSSIBLE Models are the obvious props that get worse for the wear in the extreme world. How is this one for size? Ever since superwaif Kate Moss arrived in the mid-Nineties, heroin chic, the combination of painfully skinny frame, sun-starved skin, sunken eyes and prominent hipbones, became de rigueur. Designers have their demands too. For the Kenzo show in Dubai Fashion 2007 the model had a brief to play with a dress constructed out of more material than an Indian saree, which at six metres seemed short in comparison. Designer Peter Dundas, who is yet to get outré with Ungaro, said before his show at Dubai Fashion 2007: “At Ungaro we have not done extreme things. The extreme thing about this show is the heels. At 15cm, they are very high. Almost impossible to wear. But not impossible.” A few years ago, Hussein Chalayan’s black burkhas ranged from full-length to groin-length on an obviously naked model. >

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THE SUM OF ITS PARTS Money, the great equaliser, is the best superlative of them all. The most expensive tag on an item immediately makes a difference. You can expect to cough up $37,000 for a Hermès Birkin bag adorned with orange crocodile skin and trimmed with palladium hardware. For years, women routinely shelled out hundreds, sometimes thousands for the “it” bag, but the major price shift to the five-figure handbag occurred less than a decade ago when bag-makers started offering signature items. Bags are now not just accessories, but investments and collectibles too. In 2002, Victoria’s Secret outdid its $10 million Star of Victoria Fantasy Bra and created a $15 million bra and underwear titled Red Hot Fantasy. The most expensive bra is made of red satin and 1,300 gemstones, including rubies and diamonds, and is listed in the Guinness Book of World Records as the “most extravagant and expensive items of underwear ever created”. No one has bought one yet, but that has not stopped production.

Peter Dundas says: “I don’t do a design that I cannot imagine one woman wearing it. But it has to be one” And Alexander McQueen sent model Erin O’Connor down the catwalk in a dress fashioned from razor-sharp clam shells, which made her legs bleed. Much of the extreme hard work takes place backstage. “For the Louis Vuitton show, every nail on the models had hand-placed Swarovski crystals on them. We ordered 10,000 crystals. The entire nail was encrusted with crystals. The crystals were also used under the eye in the same show to seem as if there were laser beams shooting from the eye. It took us a couple of hours to do the nails for each model. And, at the end of the show, we had to soak their nails in a solution for the crystals to come off,” says Jan Nordstrom-Arnold. Relating another example, she says: “On one hand, we sculpted a hand dragon only on the pinky. The black nail beds had a hole in each top through which ran a crystal chain from nail to nail and got wrapped around the wrist.”

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Here is more for dinner-table conversation. Victoria’s Secret even offers to deliver the bra to your doorstep in an armoured car, which will probably be needed to cart away that $15 million you just dropped on it. Waiting lists and limited editions do more for the price tag than any other gimmick. Only 10 bottles of the most expensive perfume in the world were to be sold when production began, and the costly perfume was made to order in either a women’s or men’s fragrance. Sold by Clive Christian, who acquired an established name in perfumes, Crown Perfumery, in 1999, the exorbitant scent is called Clive Christian No 1. The flacon that the perfume comes in was crafted by the French glass specialist Baccarat Crystal. The bottle is encrusted with a five-carat diamond and has an 18-karat gold collar around the top. The reported price tag on the most expensive perfume bottle ever made? A mere €170,000. The Guinness Book lists a pair of Gucci Genius jeans featuring elaborate feathers, beads, rips and buttons as the most expensive jeans that you can buy off-the-rack – for $3,134. >

Jan Nordstrom-Arnold talked about the most outrageous nails she has ever done – which includes everything from military insignia created with liquid and powder, to a nail painted like an eye, complete with eyelashes

Creative Nail Design

Models during an international fahion event

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For the Kenzo show in Dubai Fashion 2007 the model had a brief to play with a dress constructed out of more material than an Indian saree, which at six metres seemed short in comparison to the 30m dress

Recently, however, Forbes showcased Escada’s Swarovski crystal-encrusted expensive jeans which sell for $10,000. In 2004, Samantha Mumba attended the premiere of Spider-Man II in the world’s most expensive dress. Created by Scott Henshall the dress contains about 3,000

diamonds in the shape of a spider’s web and would cost you not just the clothes off your back, but an additional £5 million as well. A full-length evening sheath dress of flesh coloured soufflé gauze encrusted with graduated rhinestones embroidered in a rosette motif was worn by Marilyn

Monroe at the famous birthday tribute to President John F Kennedy at Madison Square Garden where she sang “Happy Birthday, Mr President” on May 19, 1962. This has to be one of the most expensive dresses in history, with the final price hammered down at $1,150,000. Levi Strauss Company bid $46,532 on the popular auction site eBay to buy back a pair of their own brand jeans manufactured in the 1880s. Valentino has almost patented the colour red – defined as “0% Cyan, 100% Magenta, 100% Yellow, 10% Black: the Valentino Red”. Says Emilio Carbonera Giani, the

Deputy Chief Operating Officer for Valentino: “It is not unknown for garments to cost $300,000. But in terms of popularity, the Red Valentino always has been the most popular.” Value-addition comes from uniqueness. Jan Nordstrom-Arnold says, about her military insignia collection that is archived with her: “If a Sheikha wanted them I would probably put a price to them; but really it would take thousands of dollars for me to part with them.” And, of course, the exclusivity of haute couture: “Each outfit is different and we sell only one dress per country so you can never ever find someone else with the same dress. If another client wants it, it’s impossible,” says Marie Martinez-Seznec, Director Haute Couture, Lacroix.

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Creative Nail Design

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BRIDES RULE Never does exclusivity come into play more than when it is about brides. Diamonds on clothes, million-dollar dresses and special materials are all likely to be seen in bridal couture more than anywhere else. Says Martinez-Seznec: “All our clients’ demands are special. Someone asked us to put diamonds on a wedding dress about six months ago. I tried to explain that it was impossible. It was too extravagant. She didn’t want just a little embroidery. She was from France and it was a wedding dress. It is true that we make everything, but sometimes we have to explain.” Someone else demanded it and if American media is to be believed, got it as well. A bride from Brooklyn reportedly got a $300,000 gown by Anthony La Bate of Francesca Couture. The shy bride commissioned a dress encrusted with 1,100 diamonds totalling 300 karats and 3,000 Swarovski crystals all combined with 50 yards of silk organza. On average, brides will spend anywhere from $500 to $12,000 on a gown. But the world’s most expensive wedding dress was showcased in Dubai recently at the Dubai Fashion and Diamonds 2006 held under the patronage of Sheikha Manal bint Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, wife of Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Minister of Presidential Affairs. Valued at one billion Japanese yen, it was created by Japanese designer Yumi Katsura. It is made from silk-satin and embellished with gold embroidery and 1,000 pearls, a green 8.8-karat diamond emblem and a five-karat white gold diamond, which is one of only two in the world. The one billion Japanese Yen wedding gown milLIonairE

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