Chocolate Fashion

CANADA - Using pounds and mounds of chocolate, 10 local designers created outfits – ranging from a hat, to a bikini, to a wedding dress to jeans – incorporating the decadent dark stuff for a runway show at the Carlu in Toronto on Wednesday night.

It was the fourth annual Cadbury Chocolate Couture Collection that sees the confectionery company invite fashion designers to each create an outfit – under the direction of a chocolate artist – comprised of 70 per cent of the sweet stuff.

This year's theme was the global passion for chocolate and each look referenced a different international culture.

Some of the designers seemed to subscribe to the true chocolate aficionado's credo: go with gusto and eat the whole bar, and choose only the really good stuff. While some creations looked merely spray- painted with Dairy Milk, others seemed gleefully and wonderfully overindulged.

Izzy Camilleri's African Queen was influenced by the continent's royal tribes, with a costume featuring a bodice made of twigs executed entirely of chocolate. Even stacks of arm bracelets were chocolate-dipped.

Design duo Kirk Pickersgill and Stephen Wong, of red-hot label Greta Constantine, took the silk route with their Thai Temptress, which incorporated six metres of stringed, solid-chocolate beadwork.

Milliner Karyn Gingras of Lilliput Hats fashioned a towering chapeau in the shape of the famed Sydney Opera House.

At the reception that followed chocolate fountains and chocolate martinis helped soothe chocolate cravings.