Designs on the perfect baby photos
Susan Swarbrick
It’s been a good week for ... sweet revenge WHEN self-styled “visual dictator” Kidult daubed the numbers “686” in neon green spray paint across the front of the Marc Jacobs store in Paris last week, it seemed like a deft strike for anti-consumerism.
But he clearly wasn’t banking on the canniness of the fashion designer. The pair first had a run-in when Kidult – famed for vandalising top stores worldwide including Christian Louboutin, Hermes and Yves Saint Laurent – sprayed Jacobs’s New York store with the tag “ART” in 2011.
Back then the designer swiftly responded by taking a photograph, printing it on a run of T-shirts and selling them for $686 (£450) – the figure referenced by Kidult in his latest stunt.
But once again Jacobs, below, has had the last laugh by printing up a new batch of T-shirts which are on sale now for, yup, you guessed it, $686.
Rubbing salt in the wounds, the designer’s team were spotted on a celebratory night out on the town wearing trucker caps emblazoned with the same tag. Well played, Mr Jacobs. It’s been a bad week for ... maternity ward glamour HOSPITAL bag? Check. Birthing plan? Check. Spray tan, manicure and bikini wax? Check, check and check.
It would seem that the days of rolling up with only a clean nightie and a face flannel to prepare for those first photographs welcoming the latest addition to the family are long gone.
The burgeoning popularity of social networking sites and HD camera phones has left many mums-to-be fretting that they must look picture-perfect for their close-up.
Salons are reporting a 10% increase in requests for pre-birth beauty treatments – including St Tropez spray tans, manicures, bikini and leg waxes, eyebrow shaping and eyelash tints – among expectant mothers who want to be immaculately groomed in the delivery room. As if there wasn’t enough of a drain on NHS resources already without a legion of Katie Price and Kim Kardashian lookalikes running up electricity bills of epic proportions as they plug their GHD straighteners into hospital mains.
Never mind errant hair extensions clogging up sink drains, fake tan streaked sheets and lost acrylic fingernails in places – well, you get the picture ...