Vogue’s Olympic Gold

FASHION has played its part in the fantastically successful Olympic events over the course of the last two weeks via Stella McCartney's Team GB kit - but Vogue itself has been credited with the success, in part, of tonight's Closing Ceremony. "It just wouldn't have been possible without Vogue and without [fashion director] Lucinda Chambers specifically, who persuaded all the models and the designers to get involved," Daniel Marks, director of public relations powerhouse The Communications Store, told us tonight - describing in detail how the fashion element of the extravaganza came together. Just in case you missed it - it involved Nick Knight-shot billboards featuring the biggest names in British supermodelling wearing our most headline-making British labels - Kate Moss (in McQueen), Naomi Campbell (McQueen), Karen Elson (Burberry), Stella Tennant ( Christopher Kane), Lily Cole (Erdem), Jourdan Dunn (Jonathan Saunders and Stephen Jones), Georgia May Jagger (Victoria Beckham), Lily Donaldson (Vivienne Westwood), and David Gandy (Paul Smith) - coming alive as the billboards were torn down (to a soundtrack of David Bowie's Fashion), to reveal the models' themselves. They then took to a Union Jack-shaped catwalk, followed by a legion of black-adorned foot soldiers who fell into formation in the centre of the catwalk - revealed by a helicopter above them to be the iconic Alexander McQueen skull shape, in tribute to the most revered British designer of this generation. Britain's most celebrated hair and make-up artists - Sam McKnight and Val Garland respectively - were called upon to perfect the look.

 Two years in the making, tonight's fashion offering came as a result of Marks approaching Kim Gavin, creative director of the Closing Ceremony, to establish whether it would play a part at all in the proceedings. "At that time there wasn't a plan but then Kim came up with the idea of the billboards and that's when we called on Lucinda to come to the rescue," he explained. "I didn't think about the hugeness of it until I saw the Opening Ceremony and thought, 'wow, lots of people are watching this,'" Lucinda said before tonight's event. "I'm a bundle of nerves." "It felt like such a privilege, such a celebration of fashion. The clothes were beautiful but not bonkers or mad. It was the best of British," she went on. "Sport is glamorous - and the fact that Stella was asked to do the kit is wonderful. Sport, fashion, music - they're all so blurred. How great to celebrate everything that's wonderful about Britain and part of that is fashion." DOLLY JONES












12 August 2012
http://www.vogue.co.uk/news/2012/08/13/olympic-closing-ceremony---supermodels-fashion-segment-vogue