Hollywood glamour has always been a fashion inspiration, but in 2003 Los Angeles the magic came not from the big screen, but from real life. “Stars!—They’re Just Like Us!” had launched in US Weekly a year before, and suddenly there was a steady stream of photos of celebs like Madonna, Gwen Stefani, Brandy, Jennifer Lopez, and Lindsay Lohan going about their daily routines: yoga, the grocery store, Starbucks, all wearing a Juicy Couture velour tracksuit. The label founded by Pam Skaist-Levy and Gela Nash-Taylor in 1997 had in a few years become the official uniform of the rich and famous.
It was only natural that Vogue’s Sally Singer would invite the fashionable duo—who often wore twinning outfits—to attend the couture shows in Paris. “When I called to invite them to the Paris collections, unfeigned screams of joy and the clatter of high heels jumping for joy (really) sounded in my ear,” Singer writes. “You are Our Ed McMahon! We’ve won the golden ticket,” Gela reportedly responded.
They come bearing presents (for Karl Lagerfeld, a velour tracksuit monogrammed with the word SLIM), and end up on the receiving end of some impressive fan-boying. John Galliano revealed that “he wore their tobacco trackpants every day when designing the collection,” and at the post-show Valentino dinner his business partner Giancarlo Giametti needed to be “dissuaded from tearing his clothes off and suiting up” once he received his own monogrammed Juicy sweats. Singer’s account of her week with the Juicys might be even better than experiencing it all first-hand. |
