Lose the Dress
Top Models Give One Up For Elettra Wiedemann's Charity
Recently, Elettra Wiedemann reached out to a bunch of fellow models and asked each to part with a designer dress. "With Iman, who's friends with my mother, it was a very formal e-mail," she told Style.com. (Mom is Isabella Rossellini.) In other cases, her tactics were more direct. "Shalom [Harlow] is my friend," Wiedemann continued. "So with her, I was like, 'Give me a dress, girl!' " Whatever the approach, Wiedemann (who enlisted her stylist, Nick Steele, in the effort) was very successful, in part because it's all for a good cause. Her charity, One Frickin Day, is raising money for solar-powered health clinics in Haiti and Rwanda.
The dresses, most of which have been worn just once, are on auction until December 7 at Charitybuzz.com. Friday night, they were on display at Christie's, where Wiedemann and her fiancé, James Marshall, co-hosted a cocktail party to help get the word out. It didn't take long for a little black Louis Vuitton number with a rosette shoulder (Natalia Vodianova's contribution) to catch Lauren Remington Platt's eye. "That's the dress I want to wear when my first husband dies," she decided.
Over by the bar, Arlenis Sosa was breaking in a form-fitting Hervé Léger cocktail dress for the auction block—and, considerately, ordering sparkling water. (The legendary couture menders and cleaners at Madame Paulette donated their services to get all the frocks in tip-top shape.) Karolina Kurkova's contribution was the dress Richard Chai designed for her for the 2009 Costume Institute Gala, when she was five months pregnant—"not because I couldn't fit into dresses, but because we wanted to make something special," she clarified. Anja Rubik, meanwhile, had donated a floral-print number by Matthew Williamson she'd worn in the designer's show. "It was a bit difficult [to part with it]," Rubik admitted. "But if it had been the shoes I wore with it, I would be crying."
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