Safe bet for Selfridges

David LaChapelle’s celebrity portraits and fashion photographs are exuberantly pop, joyously synthetic, campily melodramatic and cheesily erotic. Fittingly, LA-based LaChapelle was chosen to design the windows for Selfridges’ Vegas Supernova event. Vegas, after all, is the kitschest city in the world and LaChapelle is an admirer of Truman Capote’s quip ‘Good taste is the death of art’. Selfridges marketing director Beverley Churchill commissioned LaChapelle after seeing his sets for Elton John’s spectacular Vegas show, The Red Piano, replete with winking neon lights, and giant red roses. For Selfridges, LaChapelle has designed 12 windows filled with neon signs and plastic inflatables, each illustrating a different Vegas peccadillo, with names like Pole dancers, 24-hour liposuction and Wedding chapel. ‘The windows will advertise some of what’s on offer in the store, including a wedding chapel for blessings, and make the Vegas theme as explicit as possible to passers-by,’ says Churchill. Surprisingly, the windows are relatively restrained. Not that Churchill appears to feel short-changed: ‘LaChapelle came up with all the glamour and larger-than-life theatre we associate with Vegas.’

Visit Vegas Supernova at Selfridges from 22 April to 15 May