Swarovski’s Fashion Element

There’s no doubt that Swarovski’s crystals have punctuated some major moments in fashion history over the last 120 years. The firm’s embellishments and technology have appeared on everything from the crystal-encrusted armadillo boots that Alexander McQueen created for his Plato’s Atlantis spring 2010 collection, to the twinkling, LED dress that Hussein Chalayan sent down his fall 2007 runway, to Christian Dior’s and Coco Chanel’s couture designs in the Fifties, and back to the embellishment on Queen Victoria’s gowns designed by Charles Frederick Worth. And just as the company’s founder Daniel Swarovski decided to locate Swarovski’s headquarters in Wattens, Austria, in 1895 partly because of its rail links to the center of the fashion world in Paris, Nadja Swarovski since 1995 has set about re-establishing Swarovski’s connection with designers. “I grew up with my grandfather telling me stories about working with Coco Chanel and Christian Dior,” Swarovski said. “[But] once I started working in the business [in 1995], that kind of connection and collaboration didn’t exist anymore.” The catalyst for a new era of designer collaborations turned out to be the late stylist Isabella Blow. When Blow sat next to Swarovski’s father, Helmut, at a lunch “in the English countryside,” Swarovski remembered, he was

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