21-year-old Daria Radionova has been attracting a lot of attention on the streets of London with her swanky, crystal-encrusted car. The Russian student apparently wasn’t content with her Mercedes CLS 350; she wanted something more ‘unique and special’. So she spent £20,000 (a little over $30,000) to coat the luxury vehicle in a million Swarovski crystals.
The sparkly car is currently parked outside the Levin Hotel in Knightsbridge, in West London. The neighborhood is well-known for rich Arab kids speeding around in their garish supercars during the summer. Among the well known cars in the area are a gold Range Rover, and an assortment of Rolls Royces, Ferraris, and Lamborghinis. Daria had to do something different if she wanted her car to stand out, so she chose to cover every last inch of it with crystals, including the door handles.
She recruited a special team from Russia to work on her pet project – it took them two months of 12-hour workdays to complete the job. “I am really happy with it and looking forward to driving it around,” she said. Cleaning the car hasn’t been a problem – a regular sponge and soapy water do the job quite well. She keeps a small bag of spare crystals inside the car, just in case one on the exterior falls off.
Now that the car is ready, it has been getting a lot of attention – people on the street are stopping to take a closer look and click pictures. “It has only just been finished and everywhere I go people stop to have a look at it. It gets lots of attention from people walking by and in cars. Sometimes I think they might crash.”
A manager at the hotel said: “We have a lot of unusual cars like Ferraris parked outside but I think this one has got the most attention.” Not all the attention is positive though, some people are viewing it as rather excessive and unnecessary. But Daria isn’t concerned about that: “Haters and jealousy will always be around successful people,” she said.
“If you have the cash why not do it? It looks good and fun.” She also revealed that when she sells the car, she plans to give the money away to charity.
Photos: Daria Radionova/Facebook
