What Happens to Red Carpet Dresses?

After celebrities wear a gown to a glitzy award show or festival, it's often archived, but sometimes sold, reproduced, or even stolen. Learn the life story of red carpet fashion in this episode of BrainStuff.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Welcome to brain Stuff from How Stuff Works, Hey, brain Stuff,
Lauren Vogel bomb here. The popularity of award show fashion
has practically eclipsed the award shows themselves. For example, the
E Network now devotes an entire broadcast day to the
Oscars Red Carpet, starting with a morning pre pre show
followed by hours long live coverage. For designers, the Red

(00:26):
Carpet is one of the most visible and buzzed about
ways to promote their brands. Some top designers will pay
a list, actresses and musicians big bucks to wear their
dresses or jewelry between one hundred thousand and two hundred
and fifty thousand dollars, depending on the star power of
the given celebrity. Other celebrities are allowed to borrow a
designer dress, handbag, or jewel studded necklace for the night

(00:48):
for free, of course, in order to get the designer's
name into the highly clickable Red carpet photo slide shows.
But what happens to that very expensive dress when the
red carpet is rolled up and the TV camera us
move on to the next event. Is the gown stuffed
into a closet never to be worn again? Or does
the designer take it down to the dry cleaner and
try to sell it on Craigslist. We reached out to

(01:10):
Ariana Wisener, a Hollywood stylist, for some answers. Wisener, who
dresses celebrities for award shows, press tours, and magazine spreads,
says that one of the dresses loaned out for awards
shows go right back to the designer or okay, like nine.
Weisner said, on rare occasions, the designer will gift the
celebrity the gown. One famous example the ethereal and deeply

(01:33):
plunging green Versaci dress that Jennifer Lopez wore to the
Grammys in the year two thousand. Wisner said Versaci gifted
her the dress because it was such an iconic moment,
and indeed it was. According to a blog post by
Google CEO Eric Schmidt, the dress was the direct inspiration
for creating Google image search. The really big design houses

(01:53):
like Dior, Louis Vuitton, and Chanel will take back a
red carpet dress and keep it in their archives, says Wisener.
You won't see a statement gown from the Oscars resold
to the public, dry cleaned or not, but that's not
the case for lower tier designers. Wisener sites the rise
of fashion rental companies in Los Angeles and New York
for this trend. Less conspicuous red carpet dresses from whatever

(02:15):
designers Wisener's term could very well end up on the
racks of shops like Our Miriam or rent the runway
a few years after a big event. Sample sales are
another place where you might stumble upon address that a
celebrity war for one big night. When a designer's warehouse
becomes overstuffed with leftovers from events, last year's line and
sample sized dresses that were tried on repeatedly in the store,

(02:37):
they hold a sample sale, frequently involving deep discounts. Even
if you can't get the very same dress that a
celeb war on the red carpet, you might be able
to buy an exact replica. Every once in a while,
says Wisener, a dress that really pops at an award
show is picked up for mass production, one recent example
being a pleaded silver gown that Kate Hudson war to

(02:59):
the Vanity Fair Oscars post party. The designer sells the
same dress online for only three thousand three hundred and
twenty five dollars. Really luxurious dresses not only grabbed the
attention of fashion fans but also thieves. At the Oscars,
actress Lupid and Youngo wore a white gown by Calvin
Klein studded with six thousand pearls worth an estimated hundred

(03:21):
and fifty thousand dollars. The gown was reported stolen from
Yongo's Los Angeles hotel the day after the Oscars, but
was then mysteriously returned by the thief. According to TMZ,
after the dress burglar snatched the gown, they removed two
pearls and took them down to the garment district. There
were fakes. The thief dumped the worthless dress in a
bathroom back at Nyongo's hotel and tipped off TMZ to

(03:44):
its location. Today's episode was written by Dave Ruse and
produced by Tyler Klang. If you're interested in fashion, check
out our new compatriot podcast called Dressed. It's all about
the stunning his story of how we humans clothe ourselves,
and of course, for more on this and lots of
other topics that make a statement, visit our home planet,

(04:07):
how Stuff Works dot com.