by In the 70s, the Palace of Versailles was obsolete. The centuries-old chateau was plagued by termites and its gilded ceilings had leaked. Needing money for renovations, Versailles chief curator Gérald Van der Kemp sought advice from fashion publicist and CFDA founder Eleanor Lambert, who envisioned the WWD “Battle of Versailles” fundraiser.
Fifty years ago, ten designers engaged in a stylish skirmish that would cement Stateside couturiers as fashion forces to be reckoned with. As former WWD editor-in-chief John B. Fairchild wrote in 1973, “Americans came, they stole, they won.”
More from WWD
First, take a look back at the legendary Battle of Versailles.
Which designers went to “battle?”
The event pitted French and American fashion designers against each other, with Oscar de la Renta, Halston, Stephen Burrows, Bill Blass and Anne Klein – all of whom have been clients of Lambert’s – being part of the final contingent. . Together, they took on Yves Saint Laurent, Hubert de Givenchy, Emmanuel Ungaro, Pierre Cardin and the creative director of Christian Dior, Marc Bohan.
What happened at the Battle of Versailles?
Each designer came armed with eight unique looks, some of which were not finished until the early morning of November 28.
Never before have so many models appeared in the Paris show. “They got off the bus and kissed the ground, they were so happy,” said Pat Cleveland at the WWD Apparel & Retail CEO Summit earlier this month, recalling a romantic scene of snow-covered boulders. outside of Versailles.
Inside, however, the scene was anything but romantic – near-frigid temperatures left the poorly ventilated Palace cold. Although the American team’s greeting from the French was cooler.
“There was no toilet paper in the bathroom. It was terrible,” Burrows said at the CEO Apparel & Retail Summit. “They had the girls there working all day and they didn’t feed them.”
The Gallic squad took up most of the daytime practice hours, meaning the Americans had no choice but to practice late into the evening. This wasn’t the only faux pas before the show: due to a measurement mix-up Joe Eula’s hand-painted background was removed.
Because of this, among other mistakes, Halston almost dropped out of the competition. With true thespian enthusiasm, the designer’s friend and muse Liza Minnelli, who was tapped to perform during the American segment, convinced him that the show must go on.
The French spared no expense in staging the elaborate, hours-long production, spending about $30,000 on sets and props including a pumpkin carriage and a rhinoceros-drawn cart. A 40-piece orchestra, the noble danseur Rudolf Nureyev and the legendary showgirl Josephine Baker also offered their talents to the team.
In contrast, the Americans took a reduced approach, completing their presentation within 30 minutes. Music played from cassette tape and bare spotlights to the stage of the Royal Opera House.
Although the Americans had the help of showbiz multitalent (and Minnelli’s godmother), Kay Thompson, who helped with the choreography, it was the models they needed to sell their designer clothes, which were relatively simple compared to their counterparts. French.
“We wanted to bring the clothes to life,” Cleveland explained in a 2020 interview with InStyle. “They were the companies that were moving under the banner of creativity, design.”
What the Americans may have lacked in style, they made up for in practicality: lively unstructured ensembles, like those shown by Halston and Burrows, represented an innovative change from the stuffy silhouettes of old. Their emancipatory approach to dressing women was synonymous with the changing attitudes of the years to feminism and sexuality.
“American clothes were so affected by the French,” recalled Donna Karan, who was Klein’s assistant during the battle. “‘What do you mean you don’t have hooks or eyes and wear them?’ The Americans were just that far into the future. It was about ease of dressing, from day to night,” she told WWD in 2020.
It wasn’t just the American designers who broke the mold – transforming models from simple models to leading players, twirling across the stage hands-free, unlike many of their catwalk colleagues, who at the time, usually strip with numbered cards.
Who won the Battle of Versailles?
At first, it looked like the Americans could defeat the French. “Everybody thought this was a joke,” author Marcellas Reynolds told InStyle in 2020. “They thought it was green for the European designers.”
In the end, it was the underdogs who came out victorious. The audience, including the likes of Grace Kelly and Andy Warhol, could hardly contain their excitement after the American presentation.
“They started screaming and stomping on the floor and throwing their boards in the air and screaming, ‘Bravo!'” Burrows said. “To have them react the way they did was mind-blowing. The French are usually so relaxed.”
How did the Battle of Versailles change the fashion industry?
The American victory at Versailles became even more evident in the years to come, when US licensing firms, which had once favored French designers, began to capitalize on local names such as de la Renta and Blass.
The battle also raised the profiles of several Black supermodels, including Cleveland, Bethann Hardison, Alva Chinn and Billie Blair.
“That was the start of my international career,” Chinn said at the WWD Apparel & Retail CEO Summit in October.
Although labels like Courrèges, Ungaro and Saint Laurent employed Black models from at least the 60s, they became even more visible after Versailles. In 1979, Givenchy “became the first couturier to have an all-Black cabin,” reported WWD’s Paris bureau chief André Leon Talley.
How is the Battle of Versailles still relevant today?
The Metropolitan Museum of Art commemorated the Battle of Versailles in an exhibition in 1993. Two decades later, Tom Ford paid tribute to the event at the same museum, organizing a gallery on the theme of the Battle of Versailles during the exhibition “In America: An Anthology of Fashion ” by the Costume Institute.
In 2015, former Washington Post fashion editor Robin Givhan wrote a book about the battle called “The Night American Fashion Stumbled Into the Spotlight and Made History”.
The iconic show was also the subject of two documentaries, including “Versailles ’73: American Runway Revolution” by Deborah Riley Draper. From 2023, Draper plans to adapt it into a narrative feature.
Launch Gallery: A Look Back at the Battle of Versailles Fashion Show in 1973
The best of WWD
