What Happens to Red Carpet Dresses?

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 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

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 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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, how Stuff Works dot com.