Repubblica.it today carried the news story, along with a video, on the latest extravaganza by famous Japanese jeweller Ginza Tanaka: a bikini made up entirely of 24 carat gold, worth an estimated 82 thousand dollars.

It is well know that Japan is the very centre of the luxury market: alone, it covers 40% of the segment. And Tanaka is not new to such acts of provocation, one only has to think back to his handbag made of platinum and encrusted with 2,182 diamonds (valued at 1.63 million dollars), or his Christmas tree of solid gold (21 kilos, valued at 850,000 dollars). In contrast to its predecessors, however, it is my opinion that the shock value of the object-bathing costume is based on at least 3 peculiar aspects.

Firstly, it is a garment whose primary use means it constantly exposed to the sun and to prolonged contact with water, therefore, intrinsically, it is likely to deteriorate and lose value. On top of this, the size of a bathing costume is also proportional to the size of the body that wears it: does then, when the dress size goes up, the price also go up? In fact, quiet apart from even the most expensive everyday fabrics, even the slightest extra amount of gold in the garment should lead to a significant increase in the production costs. Finally, seeing that fashion in the first half of 2007 is going through a “golden age”, we can see a certain amount of provocation in Tanaka’s idea, a provocation even directly aimed at the designers in fashion houses, as if to say: you refer to fabric and aesthetic effects as “gold”, while I am actually a “golden artist”, I have the right to actually use it in one of my projects, without the need of surrogate fabrics.

It is also no surprise that the gold bikini has set tongues wagging in the world of blogs, for example, in respect to its effective use potentials, and joking about what it would cost for a size to fit the larger woman; but amongst all this analysis, it is the morality that lies behind such an idea that raises the biggest question marks. However, for those who wish to make a splash on the beach in the summer of 2007… Ginza Tanaka’s on-line store is just a click away.

Technorati Tags: Gold, Tanaka, Ginza Tanaka, bikini, fashion, summer 2007, swimsuit

Technorati Tags: bikini, fashion, ginza tanaka, gold, summer 2007, swimsuit, tanaka

Pubblicato il 12 July 2007 da Alberto in Gold | |