Nadine Bhabha gave the red carpet something to chew on.
The “Heated Rivalry” breakout star — who plays fan favorite Elena Rygg on the Crave and HBO Max hockey drama — hosted the ACTRA Awards in Toronto on Monday in a floor-length gown studded with 540 resin teeth.
From a distance, the embellishments could pass for pearls or delicate stones. Up close, though, the white shapes dotting the straps, arcing over the bodice and running up the lace-up back were unmistakably dental.
A pair of matching hoop earrings hung with clusters of pearly whites completed the look.
“People kept doing double takes,” Bhabha’s stylist, Christal Williams, told Page Six Style. “I actually kept joking throughout the process that ‘we were going to eat every look up,’ so it felt funny and fitting that the statement piece ended up literally being a dress made of teeth.”
The gown is the work of 23-year-old designer Sahra Davaran, who created it as part of her “Teeth Couture” graduate collection for Toronto Metropolitan University’s fashion program. The five-look series — with pieces named Teeth, Enamel, Cavity, Root Canal and Amalgam — used upward of 50,000 resin teeth in total, including one dress covered entirely in them.
Davaran expected a polarizing reaction. “Some people are really disgusted. Some people hate it, and some people love it, and that’s exactly what I want,” she told us.
The concept’s origins are appropriately unusual. Davaran was browsing Amazon for fake meat props when the algorithm served up a listing for resin teeth. She impulsively ordered a pack, started tinkering with jewelry, and eventually expanded the idea into a full collection.
She set up a bi-weekly subscription with a manufacturer in China — 500 teeth per shipment — and spent roughly $6,000 to $7,000 on teeth alone. (“I was so worried they were going to ask if I had a clinic or something, but they didn’t,” she laughed.)
Bhabha’s dress, the collection’s second look, is called “Enamel”; Davaran constructed it from 300 individually cut pieces of shirting material, singeing each raw edge with a soldering iron to create a rippled, almost geological texture. The design took about 180 hours to complete.
Williams, who pitched an all-Canadian wardrobe for Bhabha’s three hosting looks, said the teeth gown jumped out immediately.
“What drew me to this dress specifically was how seamlessly the designer transformed something unconventional into something visually beautiful from a distance,” she told us. “It felt like wearable art.”
The pair have a track record of tapping emerging local designers for Bhabha’s red carpet moments.
“Canada has so many talented designers, especially emerging and student designers, who deserve larger platforms and visibility,” the stylist said.
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