Fashion's New Gilded Age

The recent Ambani wedding events were a flex of global capitalism as much as they were the Olympics for florists.

In today’s issue of Back Row:

• Take a closer look at the Ambani wedding that probably cost more than half a billion dollars.

• What the wedding signifies about the world’s new Gilded Ages, and how the fashion industry is profiting from them.

• Loose Threads, including what wedding planning for the ultra-wealthy is really like; Burberry’s struggles; and more.

Anant Ambani and Radhika Merchant’s wedding events have been subsuming the internet since Rihanna performed at their pre-wedding party in March. The groom is the son of Mukesh Ambani, the world’s eleventh richest person with a net worth of $124 billion, who serves as the chairman of Reliance Industries. Reliance owns one of the world’s largest oil refineries, the largest mobile phone network in India, a chain of grocery stores, and other media and entertainment ventures. Reliance Brands has brought fashion labels including Armani Exchange, Burberry, Diesel, Emporio Armani, Giorgio Armani, Jimmy Choo, and more into India. Anant leads the energy division.

The wedding has become an international spectacle. Think of Pharrell’s debut show for Louis Vuitton or the Barbie movie press tour, but combine them, add Kardashians and world leaders, then ladle diamonds and Met Gala-level floral sculptures on top. In fact, Kim Kardashian took the time to post specifically about all the diamonds she wore to the festivities on Instagram.

Guests at the various wedding events included Ivanka Trump and her husband Jared Kushner, Mark Zuckerberg, Samsung CEO Han-Jong Hee, Boris Johnson, and Bill Gates. From the BBC:

“These are very busy people. They aren’t coming just to have fun,” James Crabtree, author of The Billionaire Raj: A Journey Through India’s New Gilded Age, told the BBC.

"What this tells you is that global business leaders believe the Ambanis are strategically important and also that they see India as a very big market."

Nothing says romance like “strategic importance” and “a very big market.”

The pre-wedding party in March included more than 1,200 guests and took place in Jamnagar, where the airport was inadequate for the volume of incoming private jets so Indian authorities and the air force stepped in to help manage the air traffic.

Vogue secured the “world exclusive” to cover the wedding, and just dumped 82 photos from the final round of events onto its site. The story included some eye-popping details about how gargantuan and spendy this thing was, including that the groom’s baraat took place at a convention center and featured 60 animal sculptures made from around a total of 600,000 flowers. And that was just the baraat!

The wedding, the reception for which was attended by more than 14,000 people, has been credited with “put[ting] India’s Gilded Age on lavish display.” An estimated 80 percent of the attire had been custom-made for the wedding (the other 20 percent was purchased in retail stores). The events were a flex of global capitalism as much as they were the Olympics for florists. I’d describe it as more like a colliding of Gilded Ages than a totem to just the one.