Dua Lipa, radical optimist and gelato enthusiast, gave a one-off performance at Royal Albert Hall on Thursday night accompanied by a 53-piece orchestra, a 14-piece choir, and Sir Elton John—with stylist Jahleel Weaver dressing the British-Albanian artist in two custom looks for the career milestone. If Weaver conceived Lipa’s Glastonbury costumes as “young, strong, cool, and sexy” when she headlined Worthy Farm earlier this summer, the musician’s gowns onstage in London this week felt polished and mature, yet still distinctively Dua.
First up: a recreation of a gown from Jean Paul Gaultier’s 2001 couture offering, a masterclass in “nouvelle couture,” as Vogue wrote in its review at the time. The enfant terrible’s comparatively restrained, gorgeously wrought designs for the collection represented “lighter, more romantic” takes on the iconography he had established at his eponymous house through the decades. (“Now that I have been in fashion for 26 years, I can do something that’s more delicate, less aggressive,” he told Vogue backstage. “I wanted to be suggestive and play with what is visible and what you have to imagine—clothes that give the impression that they are falling off the body, or that occasionally reveal a flash of skin.”) Lipa wore an update on Look 51 from the blockbuster aughts show, but with the corseted dress reworked in scarlet and the opera gloves in burgundy, while Tiffany & Co. provided accessories in the form of diamond Jean Schlumberger earrings and a spessartine ring.
Her second look, meanwhile, came courtesy of Chanel’s Maisons d’Arts and 31 Rue Cambon ateliers, where petites mains spent 600 hours embroidering the taffeta design with pearls (Atelier Montex) and feathers (Lemarié). Note, too, the tubular braiding and camellia flower embellishments—both Chanel signatures—on the finished reimagining of a classic LBD. Lipa, of course, has long been a champion of the house for red carpet events. It’s Chanel who provided her tweed gown for the 2023 Karl Lagerfeld-themed Met Gala, which Lipa hosted; Chanel, too, who dressed her in lace for last year’s Academy Museum Gala. Get a closer look at the making of her dress below.