Katie Derham looked a million dollars as she was pictured in a dress made out of money (£50k of notes/pound coins in total) to launch the ITV show The People’s £50 Million Lottery Giveaway.
Wow I really love this video!
http://sheisinparis.blogspot.com/
I adore this song! Joung-Hwan Park title “She is in Paris”
Once upon a time, in a faraway land…. |
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Princess Diana’s Racy Black Dress Bought By Chilean Fashion Museum For $275,000 facebook Chilean fashion museum for nearly 200,000 pounds (more than $275,000) – several times the original estimate.
The strapless silk taffeta dress’s revealing cut and striking black color caused a minor scandal when Diana was pictured stepping out of a limousine in the outfit in at a London charity event in 1981. But while some thought the dress was too daring for the 19-year-old royal bride-to-be, it helped turn Diana into an overnight fashion icon.
“I think Diana didn’t really have a particular sense of style, I mean, she dressed as a typical ‘Sloane Ranger’ of that time, you know, with the skirts, cardigan, little sweater, pearls, it was kind of a uniform for girls of that age,” said Elizabeth Emanuel, who designed the black dress with her then-husband David.
Emanuel said the couple didn’t anticipate the reaction the dress would draw.
“Royals aren’t supposed to wear black, apart from when in mourning,” she said. “And you know, it was dangerously low … So of course when she did wear it the press went absolutely crazy and every front page had pictures of Diana wearing the black dress stepping out of the car.
“I think from that minute on, Diana became a fashion icon that the press couldn’t wait to see what she would be wearing next.”
The dress was part of a collection that includes the blouse Diana wore for her official engagement portrait in 1981, and the cotton toile prototype of her wedding gown – also designed by the Emanuels – which was used to ensure the fit was just right.
Also for sale were sketches, notes, invoices connected with her wedding to Prince Charles – including the handbag Emanuel carried to the event at St. Paul’s Cathedral on July 29, 1981.
Chile’s Museo de la Moda paid 192,000 pounds (about $276,500) for the dress, a price that includes the buyer’s premium.
circa 1915: Mrs Evalyn Walsh McLean, one of the owners of the famous Hope diamond, a 44 1/2 carat stone which, legend has it, was taken from the eye of a Burmese idol and is supposed to bring bad luck to anyone who owns it. Mrs McLean died of pneumonia in Washington, aged 60. (Photo by Topical Press Agency/Getty Images)
Most agree that the diamond was originally found by Jean Baptiste Tavernier, a French merchant who traveled through India. Some legends claim that he stole it from an ancient Hindu idol, who then cursed anyone who touched his pilfered treasure. The diamond traveled through history from there: sometimes gifted, sometimes stolen, and always a coveted item.
It has been noted as the source of all kinds of bad luck – the beheading of King Louis XVI and his wife Marie Antoinette, the gambling debts of Britain’s King George IV, and the lonely unmarried life of Henry Phillip Hope, who inherited the blue diamond in the early 1800s. Nearly every member of the Hope family is rumored to have died in poverty, which led to the sale of the (officially titled) Hope Diamond in 1901.
Shortly thereafter, the famous jeweler Pierre Cartier found a potential buyer in Mrs. Evalyn Walsh McLean. She reportedly believed that objects considered “bad luck” always gave her extra goodluck, so Cartier made sure to embellish the history of the haunted Hope Diamond. Despite her confidence, she was struck by one tragedy after another throughout the rest of her years.
Evalyn Walsh McLean (August 1, 1886 in Leadville, Colorado, – April 24. 1947 in Washington, D.C.) was an American mining heiress and socialite who was famous for being the last private owner of the 45-carat Hope Diamond as well as another famous diamond, the 94-carat Star of the , the daughter of Thomas Walsh who had made a fortune gold-mining in Colorado. After a childhood in mining camps, she’d been given the finest education money could buy.
She married a man almost as rich as her father, the newspaper heir Edward McLean. In the summer of 1910, soon after their first child was born, the McLeans visited Paris where Pierre Cartier showed them the Hope Diamond.
Evalyn did not like the way it was set, but Cartier was not discouraged. He had it reset as the centrepiece of a necklace of brilliant white diamonds, and that October travelled with it to New York New York, state, United States.
He brought with him documents describing the diamond’s history, which he asked Evalyn to look at alongside the necklace, suggesting she kept both for the weekend.
The strategy worked: by Monday Evalyn had decided she wanted the necklace, and in the spring of 1911 a price of $180,000 (equivalent to [pound]5 million) was agreed.
Evalyn, aware of its reputation, took the diamond to a priest to have it blessed as soon as she bought it. From then on, she wore it constantly, often along with the other diamonds she collected.
One photograph shows her wearing the Hope necklace with two others, diamond earrings, diamond clips and a wristful of diamond bracelets. ‘I might as well put it all on at once and then I know where it is,’ she would say.
But although she did not believe in the Hope’s malign influence, her life was marred by tragedy.
Her brother died young, her elder son – whose birth was celebrated by the purchase of the Hope necklace – died in a car accident when he was nine, her husband began to drink heavily and the marriage ended in divorce, and her only daughter died of an overdose, in 1946, at the age of 25.
Shattered by these tragedies, Evalyn died from pneumonia the following year.
Her death occurred on a Saturday, when the banks were shut, and her executors, who had discovered the Hope necklace hidden in the back of her tabletop radio, could not think how to keep it safe until the following Monday.
They appealed to the head of the FBI, J. Edgar Hoover Noun 1. J. Edgar Hoover – United States lawyer who was director of the FBI for 48 years (1895-1972)
John Edgar Hoover, Hoover , who allowed them to keep it in an FBI safe.
Evalyn’s jewellery – all 74 pieces – was bought in April 1949 by the New York jeweller Harry Winston for $1.5 million. Nine years later, he presented the Hope Diamond to the National Museum of Natural History.
The National Museum of Natural History in Washington DC, sending it by recorded delivery.
The postman who delivered it, James Todd, subsequently had his leg crushed by a lorry.
Today, cleaned and buffed, its 74 facets glittering in its diamond and platinum setting, the Hope Diamond rotates slowly in its beige marble display case. It has drawn more visitors than any other exhibit.
The authorities are taking no chances with its safety. The first line of defence is the thick, crystal clear glass (like that behind which the British Crown Jewels can be seen), but with any hint of a threat the Hope Diamond would drop into the first of a series of vaults concealed in the base of the case, their combinations changed daily.
AND IT never ceases to delight nor to confound. In 1965, the diamond firm De Beers discovered that after exposure to ultraviolet light Ultraviolet light
A portion of the light spectrum not visible to the eye. Two bands of the UV spectrum, UVA and UVB, are used to treat psoriasis and other skin diseases. , the Hope Diamond glows like a red-hot coal for several minutes.
No one knows why this happens.
According to the head of Mineral Sciences at the Smithsonian: ‘ Nothing like this has been known to happen with any other diamond.’ But there never has been a gem quite like the Hope diamond.
What is it worth? Some experts estimate up to [pound]215 million. But as Jeffrey Post, curator of America’s national gem collection, says: ‘How can you put a value on something of such history and extraordinary attraction? It’s priceless.’ But perhaps its true costs can be measured in the lost lives that have followed it through history.
Byline: ANNE DE COURCY
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