Thursday, January 3, 2013
It is always darkest before the dawn, so the proverb goes. By our
calculations, the sun should be rising on planet fashion any day now:
the Fall 2012 runways plunged us into a cavernous black hole of clothes
worthy of Louise Brooks and Siouxsie Sioux, and haunting beauty looks
that referenced Tim Burton’s films. That mood also infected the making
of Lady Gaga’s fragrance, Fame. “I like black, especially what it has to
do with fame, because it is a veil,” she says, tapping her knife-like
ebony talons on the table at a hotel in New York. “It’s sort of like
saying, ‘I don’t want you to see something.’” The R&D department
struggled to create the noir-hued perfume that turns clear once
airborne—an industry first. (Rumour has it one staff member was inspired
when he spotted a bottle of black vodka behind the bar while out for a
drink.) The request for an ominously coloured juice was music to the
ears of its perfumer, Richard Herpin. It meant he didn’t have to exclude
ingredients that can be visually unappealing when mixed together. “I
could use anything I wanted,” he says. As fashion has taught us, black
hides a multitude of sins.
