New opening
Ed Hardy Wafi City
Covered with elaborately drawn daggers piercing hearts, morbid skulls, mischievous devils, and roaring tigers – lifted straight from the designs of vintage tattoos – Ed Hardy’s T-shirts, trainers, baseball caps and jeans are the sort of slightly gothic, biker chic, clobber you’d imagine Ozzy Osbourne’s bratty offspring wearing as they stamp about smoking and swearing.
Named after the so-called ‘godfather of tattoo’, ageing American artist Don Ed Hardy, this eye-catching, vividlycoloured clothing line (actually designed by flamboyant Frenchman Christian Audigier) has been screaming for attention since its Melrose Avenue flagship store opened in 2000. Six years on, after complementing the wardrobes of celebrities and mere mortals across Europe, the Americas, Africa and Asia – Ed Hardy has hit Dubai.
With ‘Ed Hardy’ scrawled across the heads, chests and bottoms of the A list, paparazzi snappers have helped launch the brand as a household name and the pine-enclosed surrounds of the new Wafi store are keen to show off their celebrity status. Photographs of Madonna, Britney, Posh and Becks, Missy Elliott and the king of style himself – David Hasselhoff – line the walls of the small boutique that still smells of fresh paint.
The womenswear is all tight tees and skinny jeans covered in diamantés –with both cutesy cartoons of bumblebees and the more popular rock’n’roll-esque dagger-piercing hearts images with scrolls reading ‘love kills slowly’. The menswear is baggier with masculine images of testosterone-fuelled big cats, fire-breathing dragons and beefy bulldogs. Naturally for a Los Angeles line there are pet carriers for your Tinkerbell mini-pooches as well as a small selection of clothing for children too young to get real ink under their skin.
As well as covetable clothing inside the store, you’ll also find an informative staff member who will tell you exactly what items you are looking at. ‘T-shirt’, she said helpfully when we lifted up the garment. Er, thanks. ‘Bag’, she said as we took a peek inside a pet carrier. Then ‘shoes’, she said inches from us as we perused the rack of illustrated canvas baseball boots and daps. At that point we ran for the… ‘door’. Michelle Byrne.