Celebrities and designers. Two powers that keep the world of entertainment going.
Celebrities depend on designers to dress them up, make them look perfect, and admirable. No one understands the power behind a dress better than celebrities. Good outfits can put them in prestigious places, but bad ones can also put them in prestigious places to… for looser.
Designers depend on celebrities in promoting their clothes. It’s really hard to be a famous designer, a real designer! Vogue don’t open it’s door to every designer in the market. Young designers have to be ready for failures, critics, ignorances, and… celebrities. For example: no one knew about Herve Ledger (now Leroux) bandage dress until J.Lo wore it. No one really understand the beauty of Zuhair Murad couture gown until Taylor Swift glided around beautifully in it for Grammy last year. And no one gave a shit about Mugler until Lady Gaga told the whole world that she was going to perform at Mugler’s fashion show (not a big success, but still… Lady Gaga on your show!)
Designers and celebrities have been walking hand in hand for decades. The relationship seems to grow bigger as celebrities numbers increase easily with the help of the internet. Justin Bieber? Ariana Grande? Austin Mahone? Those names didn’t come from the street, but from YouTube. Along with their improved status, designers also come with their fabulous samples on their hands. The problem is… not all of those celebrities understand the term of ‘borrowing’.
Designers begin to worry about this ‘lending’ session because not only promoting the clothes, celebrities also ruining it. It’s not unusual to see dresses that once so clean and comfortable, turned into piece of rag with dirty stains all over the corsets. Disgusting in a whole new level. And disappointing.
Lady Gaga once borrowed a Mugler dress for her music video. The dress came back in filthy conditions, even stained with… brace your digestive system… semen! Big yuck! I understand how free Americans are when it comes to sex, but semen on a thousand dollars dress?!!! How did it happen? The PR girl, who took the dress back, was really uncomfortable, yet the fashion house decided to pay for the dry-cleaning bills without making big fuss about it (yeaaahhh… a mere 500 bucks), respecting mutual friendship between Gaga and Mugler designer himself, Formichetti.
Still… semen? On a BORROWED dress?
Rihanna reported to give back her borrowed Herve Leroux mini dress in dirty condition. By dirty, I mean the dress has changed color from sexy nude to… floor-y brown. The ‘Diamonds’ singer had a really dirty-dancing birthday party with her friends and somehow decided to roll around with her (again) BORROWED dress.
Nude to brown? Impressive.
Katy Perry’s personal stylist, Johnny Wujek, lost thousands dollars Zuhair Murad couture dress. Katy wore the mini dress embellished with diamonds-look-alike glitters, complete with enough sheer to show up the diva’s smooth flesh, for MTV VMA and the next day it was going going… gone! The dress was nowhere to be found. Murad’s team was on panic. The dress was couture. The dress should be shipped off to another celebrity/magazine/exhibition right away. How can you lost a (couture) dress anyway?
Those three are ridiculously selfish when it comes to borrowing (or returning) designers’ clothes (Perry’s case is arguably her team’s mistake actually, if you want to think about it with logic). But no one beats Mariah Carey and Lindsay Lohan.
Lohan decided to cut Theia gown into two pieces, turning the US$ 1750 gown into a mini dress. With no high-fashion taste at all. Mariah also used to cut her gowns. I respect the diva, but her ‘mini Mariah’ style is indeed less than beautiful. It wan’t sexy. It wasn’t ground-breaking.
It was degrading to designers and their teams.
We all know that A-listers can buy any of those dresses with their uncountable bank accounts (Gaga once scored 90 million dollars per year according to Forbes). But they need to understand how precious clothes are to designers. Making a good outfit is not an easy thing. Haute Couture gowns need thousand of work hours, people, and years of skills.
Luckily, some designers, who are afraid their dresses are going to be a target of every filthy Hollywood stuffs, decided to stop lending celebs clothes until undecided period of time. Christopher Kane once refused to lend Victoria Beckham a dress, even though he definitely needed the attention that would have come, if he had lent her the dress.
And luckily there are still some celebrities who respect designers’ clothes. Taylor Swift was once reported to be ‘very easy to work with’ by several designers. The princess of pop jumps off whenever she gets a chance to try a Haute Couture piece, making her a real red carpet darling.
Emma Watson got a chance to wear a custom-made Chanel dress back when she was in Harry Potter (and when she was the face of Burberry), she praised Karl in interviews and grateful for the opportunity, realizing how precious the dress was.
Celebrity-editor like Anna Dello Russo also a strict when it comes to borrowing an outfit from fashion shows. She once told Mary Katrantzou (a few seasons ago, back when Mary was a new upcoming designer) that she would guard the borrowed dress with her life and well… she kinda did it by guarding the dress with all her mights. The dress wasn’t even scathed.
See? It’s easy to borrow a dress and give it back unharmed. Just pay a bit more respect fellas. Designers do have their own emotional limits. We just haven’t seen it… yet.
For young designers, when the time finally come and you are standing in the spotlights with so many stylists begging you to lend your clothes… here’s some quick little advises;
Keep your cool, discuss with your teams, learn who wants to borrow your dress, think if it’s worth the risk or not and always have a plan B. Lohan suddenly ripped your dress? It’s okay…. you could change the look and tell everyone it’s actually a punk-inspired dress and you DO need to rip the dress (theatrical fashion like McQueen!) Gaga put something greasy on your bizarre yet stylish hat? No need to worry, just sell it on an auction or on ebay, people sell everything on ebay (Gaga’s bodily fluid! For sale! Maybe you can make a fragrance out of it or something).
After all, celebrities are indeed kings and queens of promotions.
Gimme Good Style 