Airing TUES. DEC. 10TH 9/10 C
Every year it’s the one holiday event that both men and women agree to watch, the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show, except with completely different agendas in mind!
Generally speaking it’s a plethora of push-up bra plentiful beauties strutting their stuff down a catwalk that excites the demographic which is normally tuned into football – but for the ladies it’s so much more. WE LOVE IT ALL! The gorgeous nearly mystic women we’ve learned to call “angels”, the clothes – or lack there of, the fashion, the music and artful. But most importantly the breathtaking finale bra that cost more than 99% of women’s engagement rings!
Victoria’s Secret typically presents jewelers with a choice of several themes and then hands over the entire design process to them.This year the lucky angel was Candice Swanpoel who sported the bra designed by jeweler Mouawad while Taylor Swift rocked the stage. This was a surprise for me since it’s been done by London Jewelers for the last two years in a row.
Mouawad’s bra appropriately named “The Royal” consisted of 4,200 precious stones like rubies and yellow sapphires while the focal point was a 52 carat tear drop ruby! The model admitted that walking around in a $10 million fit made her nervous. I would have been too but sometimes a girl just has to get into Elizabeth Taylor character and own the night in a masterpiece like that!
“They had to mold my body to be able to make the bra and I was really excited,” Swanepoel told PEOPLE. The South African beauty followed in the footsteps of Miranda Kerr, Tyra Banks, Gisele Bündchen, Heidi Klum and Alessandra Ambrosio by wearing the annual mind boggling brazier!
I still can’t forget last year’s $2.5 million floral creation by London Jewelers worn by Alessandra Ambrosio as she strutted down the catwalk to Rihanna. I about died when I saw her in those orchid wings!
Last year’s feminine floral design was inspired by an Angels in Bloom theme, a fantasy garden filled with vibrant colored flowers. London Jewelers adorned some 5,200 precious gems: amethysts, sapphires, tsavorites, rubies, and white, pink, and yellow diamonds set in 18k rose and yellow gold. It was equipped with two detachable flower pins and a drop centerpiece with a 20 carat white diamond. The value of the bra and belt combined: $2.5 million. Marketing the bustier a Bombshell Fantasy Fragrance bottle was encrusted with amethysts, sapphires, rubies, tsavorites, white, pink, and yellow diamonds, a 10 ct. white diamond, and a hand-carved tourmaline butterfly. The eau de parfum and its decadent packaging was priced at $500,000.
The Angels in Bloom theme lent itself best to jewelry, according to London Jewelers vice president Randi Udell-Alper. It also follows a colorful direction that’s becoming more prevalent in the industry. “We did an ombré effect in the pinks, yellows, and colored stones,” she says. “It was classic and funky at the same time.”
London Jewelers’ master craftsmen sifted through some 15,000 stones to find the perfectly-colored, -sized and -shaped gems; it took them 400 hours to select and—one by one—hand-set the stones in the bra set and fragrance bottle.
“It was a lot of time, effort, and labor from a jeweler’s standpoint,” said Udell-Alper. “We welded everything onto the bra.” Asked why London Jewelers took on the arduous task, Udell-Alper said, “We love doing anything different from other jewelers. We always look to find cutting-edge. Yet we’re still in our roots and foundation as family-owned.”
The bra set and fragrance were created exclusively for Victoria’s Secret’s new three-story flagship at Herald Square in New York City.
