Material World

Adele in Giorgio Armani at the Grammy Awards (AP)

The perils of betting on celebrity dressing were potently illustrated at the Grammy awards. The night’s superstar, Adele, wore — wait for it — Giorgio Armani to accept her six gongs, before changing into Clements Ribeiro for her performance and Burberry for her finale.

I say “perils” because yesterday, as I made the rounds of New York Fashion Week, I heard two separate design camps claim she would be wearing them.

The first time was at the Zac Posen show, when an insider mentioned that, fingers crossed, Adele was going to be wearing one of their dresses. It wasn’t 100 per cent sure, she said, but it looked good.

Posen is a red-carpet favourite, and both Reese Witherspoon and Elle MacPherson wore him to the Golden Globes last month, so this seemed plausibe.

Then, when I mentioned this to my seatmate at Tommy Hilfiger later that day, he said he had been told by Barbara Tfank that Adele was meant to be wearing one of her dresses. She’s also an awards staple (Michelle Obama wore Tfank to the White House Christmas), so this also was easy to believe.

In the end, however, Adele wore neither, which means two New York designers have lost bragging rights that could have been maximised for profit potential as retailers arrive to place their autumn/winter orders. Such is the fashion world’s own little gambling game…

There’s another moral to this story though and it has to do with the fact that it was the Armani red carpet outfit that was all over Twitter/the blogosphere before you could say “Rolling in the Deep”.

Here’s my take-away:

1. It’s not enough to just dress the celebrity. You have to tell the world. Loudly.

2. The red carpet photo is worth exponentially more than any picture that comes after. Someone needs to run a cost/benefit analysis not just of how valuable it is to dress the star, but how valuable it is to dress the star at various times. The numbers are not going to be the same.