Shoes worth half a million dollars, a gold toothbrush, diamond-bestrewn underwear… What is it? Is it Russia in the epoch of “crimson jackets” or the wild 1990s long passed into oblivion? The answer is negative, because these strange products are dated 2007.
“It seems that soon Europe will be associated with very expensive and very tasteless things,” continue to clamor the journalists of various mass media publications describing yet another exclusive “toy for millionaires”. On the New Year’s Eve, Rough&Polished has drawn up its own list of jewelry “miracles”, which surprised the world in 2007.
It is rather difficult to take someone aback with a diamond-encrusted pen nowadays, but the IcedOutEmz Company managed to do it. Early this year, it released a gearshift lever iced out with diamonds and coated with white gold. This gearbox part is worth $150,000, whereas Bentley Continental GT (all in all) may be bought at $165,000.
To go on with the automobile keynote: the Luxury Show in Bucharest displayed a 1968 Volkswagen Beetle worth $88,000 (just an eyelash behind the “Bentley lever”). The price was due to its coating – this little car was, as a Russian children’s song goes, “all gold-covered, absolutely all”; to be more exact, it was coated with an 18-carat gold film, except its windscreen and windows. Alas…
The Russian expression “to take off one’s last shirt” meaning to sacrifice appeared to acquire a new connotation due to the skill of designer Gianfranco Ferre, who displayed this piece of garment embroidered with diamonds on February 23 at a Milan fashion show. The number of diamonds ran up to 900 totaling more than 300 carats in weight and $1.3 million in price. To take off such a shirt for the sake of your friend or from your friend: that is the question…
It was not clear whether Shakespeare passions tormented another artist, Britisher Damien Hirst, when he was working on his next extraordinary creation. His masterpiece – a human platinum skull encrusted with 8601 diamonds – cost $20 million to its author. This piece of art was a sensation, however all the attempts to sell it at $100 million failed. “Poor Yoric,” Hirst said sadly and bought the skull himself at an auction. Now the glamour skull is “planking out greenbacks” touring exhibition halls all over the world.
Another weird novelty of the passing year has also some relationship to the skull. We mean grills– jewelry teeth adornments. “Grills may be bought by people of various incomes. The mid-range income may afford graceful gold figures (like funny leverets and kittens or ominous skulls), as well as lab-made diamonds. Such adornments are glued to your teeth with special glue and they may stay there for several years. Those who can afford more than that and want “everlasting” adornments for their teeth may set in genuine diamonds,” says the advertisement booklet found in one of the Moscow dental clinics. A “genuine diamond” will not only be glued, it will be fixed into a hole made in your tooth. I remember the Nightingale the Robber with his sparkling gold tooth in Russian fairy tales. Thanks to the achievements of modern medicine, today anyone of the middle-income community has an opportunity to look likewise.
Lately among those whose income is slightly above the average it became fashionable to collect money and to give rare currency notes as gifts. Indeed, what kind of present can you give to a person, who has everything anyway? He or she will be pleased, for instance, to receive a pure silver coin weighing one kilo dedicated to the 10th anniversary of the monetary reform in the Ukraine. Or you may surprise someone giving one of the 18 gold coins issued early this year by the People’s Bank of China and timed to the Year of the Pig. Each of the coins with a nominal value of 100,000 yuans (about $13,000) contains 10 kilos of pure gold and has 18 cm in diameter.
For more pragmatic people or for more “advanced” admirers of expensive toys Swiss Company Pat Says Now issued this year a Diamond Flower – the most expensive computer mouse in the world. Its price exceeds $24,000. It is encrusted with 59 diamonds in 18-carat white gold. The product has a three-year warrantee in case someone will really place the mouse on the working table and use it according to its designation.
A glamour person is glamorous in everything. Even in underwear. This idea is promoted by Chinese Jewelry Company Royal Decor Jewellery, which this spring released a brassiere made of 2,500 diamonds.
The diamonds are set in 300 grams of white gold. The brassiere’s major point is a fastener made of a 5.4-carat sapphire surrounded by 60 small diamonds. This piece of underwear is worth about $1.3 million.
Ultimately, there is a product for intellectuals – a can of Pepsi made of sterling silver and valued at $100,000. 300 diamonds, 100 rubies and 100 sapphires were used to make it. In February of this expiring year, this can served as the main prize for viewers of the American football championship. It was a pity it was not put on some auction – the worshippers of Victor Pelevin’s oeuvre would have bought it to their pleasure.
New global jewellery houses and lots traded at international auctions are ever more often bringing back the anecdotes about “new Russians”. Are these products only a PR gimmick, or may it be that their concepts are dawned on someone’s creative brain not by chance, but to make some profit on desires of the world and European elite – the major consumer of luxury class exclusive stuff? It appears that millionaires have got tired of measuring each other by yachts, cars and houses and they have switched over to other toys already left behind by our compatriots. As a result, the Homo Glamorous of the 21st century is gradually turning to resemble the caricature “crimson jackets” from Russia of the 20th century. Now, when Russians are buying Kandinski, Faberge eggs and Russian Empire style items at auctions, someone, quite possibly, has his jacket back laid with the word “Adidas” in diamonds. It may be well matched with clumpy yellow gold chains – a fashionable jewelry trend of the coming season.
Anna Tishinski, Rough&Polished
