Amulets and superstitious rituals are the secret of many a designer

When Riccardo Tisci took the reins at Burberry, his debut runway show was scheduled for September 17 at 17:00h. Since then, on the 17th of every

month, the British heritage brand is said to release a limited-edition capsule collection, a move that launched on October 17th, naturally. While at Givenchy, Tisci also released a number of graphic t-shirts adorned with the number 17, accompanied by oversized crystals. Why? Simply because 17 is Tisci’s lucky number, despite it being considered bad luck in Italy. In an interview with The New York Times, Tisci, who is a proud Leo, cited his zodiac sign for his immense success in the fashion industry, going on to confess to regularly visiting psychics and tarot-card readers (“In Europe, his favorite horoscope comes from Fox in Italy. Here in New York, Mr. Tisci likes to visit a tarot card reader in Brooklyn.”)

The rising trend in New Age practices such as astrology, tarot, crystal healing and spirituality hasn’t missed the fashion industry’s leading designers. In an interview with The Talks, Tom Ford—who keeps a copy of ‘Tao Te Ching’, a literary spiritual classic, on his bedside table—went on to say that “nature is the closest thing to God, and I don’t mean God by any sort of religion, but our connection to the universe, which I think we have lost.”

Michèle Lamy at the Grand Opening Cocktail Party of L’Eclaireur in Los Angeles, September 2016.

© G. DOHERTY/GETTY IMAGES.

Michèle Lamy even visited a New Age dentist who used a holistic blend of gold with diamonds for “light enhancement” on her teeth. Naomi Campbell once said she uses an uncountable number of crystals, travelling with at least two stones on her person at all times.

For The Row’s A/W18 show, attendees were gifted palm-sized black tourmaline and white quartz crystals that promised to “repel and block negative energies” and “balance mental, emotional, physical and spiritual planes.”

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Main image: the F/W 2014-15 menswear collection by Riccardo Tisci for Givenchy nods to number 17. 

Read the full article in the May issue of Vogue Italia, on newsstands from May 5th

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