CNN
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Keep in mind when Australian costume designer Lizzy Gardiner brought on a stir on the 67th Academy Awards by stepping onto the red carpet in a robe crafted from 254 American Specific Gold playing cards?
Her shimmering spaghetti strap floor-length outfit, full with gold underwear and matching platforms, left an indelible mark on Oscars trend historical past. And for these questioning, they have been all genuine — albeit expired — Amexes. (Time Journal reported that whereas each card bore Gardiner’s identify, each lacked a digit, rendering them invalid.)
It was 1995 and Gardiner, who was virtually unknown to Hollywood on the time, was up for Finest Costume Design for her work on “The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert.” She had initially envisaged a bank card costume being worn by one of many film’s three cross-dressing protagonists, however American Express and multiple other banking companies reportedly turned down the chance to have their playing cards seem within the manufacturing. (She ended up utilizing a dress made from flip flops as an alternative).
“I’m broke, and I didn’t have something to put on,” Gardiner is claimed to have informed red-carpet reporters of the genesis of her Oscars outfit. “So I went via my record of previous good concepts.”
She later told The New York Instances that she was “searching for an American image,” including: “A Coca-Cola bottle or a Mickey Mouse would have been ridiculous, doing something with the American flag would have been insulting and Cadillac hubcaps have been simply too uncomfortable.”
When she and fellow costume designer Tim Chappel walked on stage to gather their award, host David Letterman joked, “I’m tellin’ ya, American Specific can’t purchase publicity like that.”
The corporate had, this time round, given Gardiner permission to make use of their playing cards. American Specific — which was, by the way, one of many occasion’s sponsors — despatched over 300 playing cards that she and Salvador Perez, a designer from Los Angeles, assemble right into a robe in roughly 12 hours, she informed the Instances.
A month after the occasion, an American Specific spokeswoman defined why the corporate had accredited Gardiner’s costume for the Oscars, however not the film, stating: “It’s totally different. She’s not dressing a personality. She’s dressing herself.” Not lengthy after, American Specific mentioned it had purchased the costume from Gardiner for an undisclosed worth, according to the LA Times.
Gardiner’s costume was broadly interpreted as satirical jab on the excesses of Hollywood. She not too long ago confirmed that it was certainly a “sartorial protest,” telling the Hollywood Reporter this yr that the bank cards “mentioned one thing about somebody’s wealth and standing.”
The attention-catching robe was additionally well-received on the night time, with critics commending her trend alternative as bolder than that of the pink carpet’s better-known celebrities. On the time, The New York Times wrote that on “a night notable for its lack of outrageous apparel” Gardiner managed to “make a vivid impression.”
Others have been much less complimentary. Time journal later named the costume as one of many worst robes in Oscars historical past, branding it “cheesy” and questioning “how did she sit down in that factor?”
However the robe’s affect has resonated via trend to at the present time. In 2017, American label Vaquera paid homage to Gardiner by reimagining her creation (with Vaquera-branded dummy bank cards) on the runway. Vogue noticed on the time that the design tackled “coming-of-age subjects with an absurdist angle.” A duplicate of Gardiner’s iconic costume, created by the designer and American Specific, even discovered its approach to the public sale block at Christie’s for a charity public sale, the place it fetched $12,650.
Gardiner later mirrored on the outfit in a 2017 interview, telling Australia’s ABC News that it “actually upset lots of people,” including: “A whole lot of ladies, I believe they felt upstaged or pissed off that I wasn’t taking issues as significantly as I ought to.”
Right this moment, the enduring costume is housed within the National Gallery of Victoria in Australia — a chunk of trend historical past and a reminder that you simply don’t have to be a family identify to make a splash on Hollywood’s grandest stage.
As for the quantity of publicity that American Specific reaped from the extravaganza? That’s priceless.