In preparation for her standout performance at the 2019 Met Gala, Kim Kardashian met with fashion designer Thierry Mugler to conceptualize her look. “Who are you really?” the designer asked her, according to Mr. Mugler’s manager at the time. “How would you describe yourself?”
When she replied, “I’m just a girl from California,” Mr. Mugler decided he was going to make her just that, the manager, Jean-Baptiste Rougeot, recalled.
“He said, ‘Yes, this is it! She’s straight from the ocean, from Malibu, straight onto the New York red carpet,” Mr. Rougeot said.
Inspired by Sophia Loren’s turn as a Greek sponge diver in the 1957 film ‘Boy on a Dolphin’, which features a scene in which the actress emerges from the waters of the Aegean Sea, a soaking wet shirt dress clinging to her like a second chest sticks. Skin wanted Mr. Mugler, who died in 2022, to use “wetness” to celebrate Ms. Kardashian’s curvaceous figure.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, then, that water itself – the one constant of life as we know it – has been an enduring favorite of fashion designers. By studying water droplets, they have developed several techniques to create the illusion that their garments are drenched in water, splashed, or simply accentuated by water. The effect has no shortage of fans and is attracting attention in both luxury and more affordable fashion. After all, water can never completely go out of fashion.
For Ms. Kardashian, the soak effect was achieved in several steps. First, to make the body of the dress look wet, silk organza—a fabric that naturally crinkles—was layered over liquid silicone. About 100,000 translucent sequins in three shades of nude were then embroidered to accentuate the shadows that would be present in a really wet dress.
Finally, to give the illusion that he had just come out of the water, Mr. Rougeot visited a vintage shop in Paris to look for crystals.
“Some of them are glass beads; Some of them are crystals,” he said. “They were sewn with fishing line to be completely transparent.”
Mimicking the visual effect of a water droplet is obviously easier said than done. Graham Cooks, a professor of analytical chemistry at Purdue University, pointed out the specific strengths of using crystals for that purpose.
“Crystals have facets: that gives you this lighting effect, it gives you this multiple reflection effect,” Professor Cooks said. “So it also refracts the light and gives you some rainbow patterns.”
Olina Bak, the founder of Drool jewelry, started making her brand’s signature water drop jewelry out of nostalgia for her native Greece, while she was abroad in London and it was raining.
“It just occurred to me as I watched the raindrops fall on my windows,” said Ms Bak. “I thought, okay, I’d like to try and imitate that somehow.”
To mimic the shape of water droplets, which naturally vary in size, Mrs. Bak makes all of her necklaces by hand, drop by drop, using UV resin, a viscous substance that only hardens under ultraviolet light.
At the London premiere of “Barbie” last month, Irish actress Nicola Coughlan may not have looked like she came straight out of the water, but the crystals on her Wiederhoeft custom look created an impression that wasn’t far off. .
The brand’s founder, Jackson Wiederhoeft, said the effect was achieved through a combination of two styles of beading.
“There’s one that’s kind of become a signature for us, which we make with these glass, faceted beads, where it has an almost liquid metallic effect,” said the designer. “Then we really started embroidering chandelier crystals, using real chandelier crystals to create these life-sized effects of light.”
The influencer Isabelle Allain (known to her followers as IzziPoopi), who has cultivated a significant following on TikTok largely thanks to her style instinct, recently demonstrated the creation of what she calls a “dry wet dress” for her 1.3 million followers on the platform.
“On TikTok, I find quirky pieces interesting,” Ms. Allain said on a video call, holding pieces of her small collection in front of the camera. Her favorites, she added, tend to be wet-looking clothes because they “have so much texture, so much illusion, and it can be done so many different ways.”
