From the healthy-and-safety compromising cone bras to those utterly ridiculous man-skirts, Jean Paul Gaultier always had the flair for the bizarre. So in the collab-happy times that we are in, it’s only right that the honour for the strangest collaboration belongs to him: he has teamed up with Dallas-based bullion trading company, Dillon Gage, to design a… gold bar! A *Gaultier* one-ounce 24-karat gold bar. I kid you not.
A standard ingot – BUT! ‒ engraved on one side with a heart in the middle of signature Gaultier “sailor-stripes”, his signature and some sun rays, it will cost $1,826.33, plus a $25 handling fee. With spot gold trading at $1660 per ounce, that would be a 10% premium. Mugs, you? No way! Definitely not what the clever folks over at Texas would think of you if you cough up the amount for one, as they’re billing it as a multi-dimensional investment (!): “a way to diversify holdings”, “hedge against inflation”, designer equity and “collector’s piece” (as *only* 5000 of them have been made). Woh, right into the CDS (credit default swap) alleyway we’d be venturing into, then! Wonder how many of these Bappi Lahiri will snap up…