Fashion

23rd February 2015

Newcastle based fashion stylist set to open an ‘Oscar dress’ replica store!

The 87^th Academy Awards brought more stunning dresses, designs and sparkles to Hollywood for one night only. Now, they’re coming to Newcastle!

By Lauren Etherington

Last night brought us the 87^th Academy Awards held at Dolby Theatre in Hollywood. Julianne Moore and Eddie Redmayne took home the best actor/actress awards, but which designers were the real winners out on the red carpet?

The Fashion

The red carpet saw five pairs of Jimmy Choo heels, five Christian Louboutin’s, nine Prada suits, nine Versace dresses and hundreds of thousands of crystals. Lupito Nyong’o, star of “12 Years a Slave”, wore a Calvin Klein gown with 6,000 pearls. Scarlett Johansson’s dress was embossed with around 2,000 Swarovski crystals, and Lady Gaga’s custom Alaia gown took 25 people to construct, and was made in less than 1,600 hours.

Julianne Moore wore a Chanel Haute Couture gown, designed by Karl Lagerfeld, which was sewn by 27 people and was finished in 987 hours, decorated with 80,000 hand-painted sequins. Wow!

Emma Stone wearing Ellie Saab

Replica Designs

Former celebrity stylist for online fashion store ASOS, Gemma Todd, said her favourite dress was worn by Emma Stone – designed by Ellie Saab. “The colour was beautiful with her hair and skin tone. I loved how the dress was demure from the front with a high neck and long sleeves, and then backless.”

The stylist, who has dressed A-listers ranging from Britney Spears to Rihanna, is now branching out to a new career within the fashion world. “I’m opening a store in Newcastle that will sell identical replicas of some of my favourite Oscar dresses, for a fraction of the price!”

A Fraction of the Price

A whopping amount of money was spent on jewellery for the evening, including Rita Ora’s Lorraine Schwartz jewellery, a pair of 40 carat Victorian-inspired diamond drop earrings and a 25 carat champagne diamond ring which totalled a massive £7.5 million alone.

Karolyn Waddington, a Marc Jacobs Womenswear Production Intern in New York (and close friend of budding fashion entrepreneur Gemma), credited the teams that put together these designs and dresses in such a short space of time.

“My favourite dress from this year was definitely Scarlett Johnasson wearing Atelier Versace. The bold necklace in addition to the striking emerald green dress was a knockout. I hope to see this in Gemma’s store for a fraction of the price, because I will certainly be the first to go and snap that up!”

Gemma, aspiring stylist since the age of 15, has always had to ambition to try and help people with their fashion sense and the way that they dress. “I loved playing dress up from a really young age. I’ve always wanted to dress Posh Spice when she first started in the Spice Girls. She looks brilliant these days and I love her sense of style.”

The store, located on Grey Street and set to launch on 03/05/15, will replicate all of the dresses worn by “Best Actress” winners from the past ten years, along with many more of the stunning designs.

With just 370 days to go until the 88^th Academy Awards party, the countdown has already begun to see the next lot of stunning dresses.