Dress designer loved by Beyonc, Rihanna got naked to make paintings of stars like Julia Fox

In the late summer of 2013, Wendy Nichol was two weeks away from staging her first runway show at New York Fashion Week when she got a call from Beyoncé’s stylist, Lysa Cooper.Beyoncé had spent the past 48 hours trying on 200 dresses for a video for her song “Drunk in Love,” Cooper said.And they had landed on a sheer black chiffon number Nichols had designed for her upcoming Spring 2014 collection.“She was like, ‘Jay-Z is standing here telling me this is the only dress he wants her wearing during the entire video,’” Nichol told The Post.Beyoncé went on to wear the dress as she frolicked in the ocean for the video for what would become one of her most iconic songs.

Nichol had to rush to make a duplicate of the intricate silk-tulle gown for her fashion show.Now, the one Beyonce wore is on display in Nichol’s first visual art show “Departing the World Once More,” running through Oct.

27 at her studio at the Museum Building on 158 Mercer St.“It still had some seaweed and holes in it,” Nichol said of when she got the garment back from Cooper.But she left it as it was.

“It definitely has some Beyoncé magic in it.”While a handful of Nichol’s gowns and accessories — which are beloved by celebs such as Rihanna, Zoë Kravitz, Lindsay Lohan, Claire Danes and Ilana Glazer — are on display at the show, its focus is paintings.In the past year and a half, Nichol, 52, has moved beyond designing clothing and jewelry to crafting moody portraits of fashion models and stars such as Rihanna and Julia Fox — and using her nearly naked body to put unique “imprints” on canvas.To make some of the two dozen pieces featured in the show, Nichol stripped down to shorts and a bralette, put on a transcendental meditation playlist, and “imprinted” herself on the work. She used her shoulder to crush fruit seeds, her feet to smear blueberries and her hands to press essential oils onto her canvases.“I was thinking when I make a dress, I ...