FB #6 - Important Fashion Show (The Battle of Versailles)

When I began researching fashion show videos for this blog post, I felt like I was looking at the same stuff everyone else has already seen. After all, New York Fashion Week wasn't that long ago, and Paris Fashion Week just ended last week, so I decided to try a different tack. I Googled "important fashion show," and one of the results caught my eye - Versailles '73: The Fashion Show That's About To Be Everywhere..., a post on Racked.com. I will admit, I was intrigued by the title mainly because Versailles is somewhere I have always wanted to visit. Every time I watch the movie Marie Antoinette, I find myself looking up flights to France to see if I can swing the airfare, and I fell in love with Versailles all over again when Dior filmed their J'Adore commercial featuring Charlize Theron in a staged fashion show in the Hall of Mirrors at the Chateau de Versailles.

On to the important stuff - important video fashion show!

Versailles '73, also known as the Battle of Versailles (aptly named by the press), is a fashion show which literally defined a moment in fashion history. This was a fashion show hosted by France in 1973 which showcased five French designers and five American designers, and was originally intended to be a fundraiser for restorations for the Palace of Versailles."The French team included Yves Saint Laurent, Dior's Marc Bohan, Hubert de Givenchy, Pierre Cardin, and Emanuel Ungaro. The American side had Halston, Oscar de la Renta, Bill Blass, Anne Klein, and Stephen Burrows" (Folan). However, this fashion show became much more than just a fundraiser! The French endeavored to show couture, knowing that the American designers they invited would be more apt to display sportswear and figuring that this would make the French show the better of the two. Apparently, the French team created the most elaborate sets and denied the American team the same luxury. The French team spent 2.5 hours showcasing their designs, whereas the American team got it done in 35 minutes (Cuddy). One article I read, which I couldn't find when I got around to typing up this blog post, claimed that the French team made sure the American team had the worst bathrooms to use during their stay. Talk about petty!

What really made this show a historical event wasn't the designers, the sets, or even the apparel. It was the team of models the Americans brought which included 12 African-American models. This was monumental for the time period, since the Civil Rights Movement had only taken place a few years prior in the United States, from 1955-1968.  Putting an African-American woman on the runway was unheard of, especially in France. Seeing an African-American woman strut her stuff down the runway in sportswear was unlike anything the fashion world had ever seen. "In that moment America stood its ground with the French and basically won the night. It established us in the forefront of fashion. Up until that point everyone wanted something French. They had the French fashion industry for three, four hundred years" (Folan). American sportswear finally got the recognition it deserved from the fashion world, and the French realized that Americans weren't just dabbling with fashion, but that they were a force to be reckoned with!

Stills of Stephen Burrows and his clothes from Versailles '73: American Runway Revolution
Image courtesy of PaperMag.com

Since this show was put on in 1973, I couldn't find any video snippets to share on my blog. However, a documentary about Versailles '73 debuted last year - here is a link to the trailer on Amazon. My favorite quotes are toward the end of the trailer are, "American sportswear was something that had to be paid attention to," and "There are moments in history that change the course of history, and that was a moment in history that changed the course of the fashion industry." The full documentary is available for download through Amazon - I encourage you to pay $3.99 for the 3-day rental. It is worth it!

The film was actually screened at FIT earlier this month - did you get to see it? In an interview shortly after the screening at FIT, documentary director Deborah Riley Draper explained why these 12 African-American models were such a big deal, "There was a shift in thinking: 'Let's make them look the same so we can let the clothes stand out.' In that sameness, you lose a lot of flavor. The '70s was about experimentation, it was about self-expression, it was about freedom. It was about breaking the status quo, not just in fashion but in everything" (Folan). Unfortunately, this groundbreaking moment in history did not cement a spot for African-American women on the runway. Have you ever noticed how most Fashion Week models have a sameness to them? According to an article on Madame Noire, an audit of models on the 2012 NYFW runways revealed, "Fewer than 10 percent (8.1 percent, to be precise) were black" (Garcia). According to an article on Jezebel, at NYFW this year, "Black models were hired for 271, or 6%" of looks on the runway (Sauers). Here's an enlightening pie chart to give you an idea of the breakdown from NYFW 2013:

Wow! I would say that this is an opportunity being missed, and hopefully some savvy designer will jump on the "Models of Color" bandwagon and hire a more ethnically-diverse group next year. I didn't mean for this post to get so heavy, but there you go. I found this entire subject fascinating, and I hope you learned something from it and enjoyed it as much as I did!

To conclude on a lighter note, since I can't actually post the trailer for the documentary or any other videos about the Battle of Versailles, I thought you might enjoy the Dior commercial set in Versailles' Hall of Mirrors. Charlize Theron is stunning, of course, but I encourage you to keep your eyes peeled for other famous faces and let me know whom you spot!
(Also, I dare you not to groove along to the background music... the song is Heavy Cross by The Gossip.)