Nadine Baba gave the red carpet something to chew on.
The “Rivals” breakout star, who plays fan-favorite Elena Rigg on the Crave and HBO Max hockey drama, hosted the ACTRA Awards in Toronto on Monday, wearing a floor-length gown encrusted with 540 resin teeth.
From a distance, the decoration may look like pearls or delicate stones. But up close, the white shapes dotting the straps, arcing over the bodice, and running along the lace-up back were undeniably alluring.
Matching hoop earrings with dangling pearl white clusters completed the look.
“People did double-takes,” Bubba’s stylist Crystal Williams told Page Six Style. “In fact, I kept joking throughout the whole process, ‘I’m going to eat every look,’ so it felt funny and fitting that the statement piece literally turned into a dress made of teeth.”
The gown is the work of 23-year-old designer Sahara Dabaran, who created it as part of Toronto Metropolitan University’s fashion program’s Teeth Couture graduation collection. In total, over 50,000 resin teeth are used in a five-look series of pieces named “Tooth,” “Enamel,” “Cavity,” “Root Canal,” and “Amalgam,” including one fully covered dress.
Dabaran expected a polarized reaction. “Some people are really disgusting. Some people hate it, some people love it. That’s exactly what I want,” she told Us.
The origins of this concept are understandably unusual. Dabaran was searching Amazon for fake meat props when an algorithm came up with a list of resin teeth. She impulsively ordered a pack and started playing around with jewelry, eventually expanding the idea into a full collection.
She set up a biweekly subscription agreement with a Chinese manufacturer (500 teeth per shipment) and spent about $6,000 to $7,000 on the teeth alone. (“I was really worried they would ask me if I had a clinic or something, but I didn’t,” she laughed.)
Baba’s dress, the second look in the collection, is called “Enamel”. Dabaran made the shirt from 300 pieces of individually cut shirt material, then burned each raw edge with a soldering iron to create a rippled, almost geological texture. The design took approximately 180 hours to complete.
Williams, who suggested an all-Canadian wardrobe on three of Bubba’s hosts, said Teeth’s gown immediately jumped out at her.
“What attracted me to this dress in particular was how seamlessly the designer transformed something unconventional into something visually beautiful from a distance,” she said. “It felt like wearable art.”
The pair have a track record of using emerging local designers for Baba’s red carpet moments.
“There are a lot of talented designers in Canada, especially new and student designers, who deserve a bigger platform and visibility,” the stylist said.
