At the tender age of 14, in 1978, clutching a special mention award from Vogue UK’s annual young writers’ competition, I asked Bea Miller, the magazine’s then editor, for a favor. With nothing to lose, I said, “It would be a dream to attend Bill Gibb’s next fashion show.” To my absolute surprise, my request was granted. There, in the grand ballroom of a hotel, I was filled with joy watching models like Jerry Hall and Marie Helvin strut their long legs in the dresses of my dreams – fox tails, fine knitwear, and shimmering lace. Amidst the challenging Britain of the 1970s, where I grew up (electricity restrictions, IRA bombings, my parents’ divorce), I found refuge in the magic of fashion’s awakening. Fortunately, London’s Lightroom space now hosts a new immersive exhibition that recreates the awe I felt then. Vogue: Inventing the Runway opens its doors this autumn (from October 25th) to bring us the history of fashion shows through films and photographs from different periods – Gabrielle Chanel showcasing her latest creations in the 1930s; the refinement of Christian Dior and Cristóbal Balenciaga in the 1940s and 1950s; the avant-garde of John Galliano and Lee McQueen in the 1990s, and much more – all accompanied by countless testimonies from those who attended, from high society and big business representatives to today’s influencers and celebrities.
From Lady Duff Gordon’s Maison Lucile, which captivated the British (and French and American…) Belle Époque with dream creations presented only to a privileged few, to today’s design superstars whose work is seen simultaneously around the globe and whose shows are monstrous pop culture machines that sweep through spectacle (Pharrell Williams’ spring 2024 menswear for Louis Vuitton), exotic destinations (Louis Vuitton’s cruise 2017 show that Nicolas Ghesquière took to Rio), or whatever.
It’s worth noting that the earliest fashion presentations weren’t actual shows, nor were the models even real people. In the 1850s, Charles Frederick Worth, who invented fashion as we understand it today, introduced the concept of presenting clothes with living, breathing women, replacing the miniature dolls that fashion enthusiasts had previously used to choose their outfits. When Worth finally opened his own store, he quickly attracted a loyal clientele of blue blood in his private salons, but also a crowd of wealthy ‘meretrices’ who he invited every Thursday morning (just in case anyone got the date wrong). Gabrielle Chanel would transform fashion half a century later with young girls as models – in the early 1920s, courtesans paraded, who were looked upon with a certain disdain – descending the stairs and walking through the luxuriously decorated rooms of the house on Rue Cambon. From the very first premiere of the spring or autumn collection, customers flocked, and the show was held at the same time every day for the following week.
However, it was in the 1940s that the fashion show truly became a global phenomenon. Pierre Balmain, a fiery country boy, was the first atelier couturier to dare to leave Lucien Lelong’s house to open his own business. He did so in 1945, and his first collection was a triumph of femininity after long years of war: author Gertrude Stein, sitting in the front row with her poodle, Basket, in tow, wrote an enthusiastic review in Vogue, her first and last fashion criticism. The excitement generated by Balmain’s debut, however, was nothing compared to the euphoria aroused by his former colleague at Lelong, a quiet little man named Christian Dior. If already at Lelong – as revealed by Théâtre de la Mode in 1945 (an exhibition of miniature figures that attracted far more people than the collections themselves), he created designs with wasp waists, softened shoulders, and long skirts that breathed fresh air after so many years of straight lines and knee-length skirts, in February 1947, the House of Dior was born. The headquarters on Avenue Montaigne was the perfect canvas to showcase his clothes: gray rooms with all the chic of the Belle Époque. The Duchess of Windsor, Lady Diana Cooper, and Nancy Mitford congregated in salons packed with grand ladies, eager to see the reason for all the fuss. His girls were beautiful, sophisticated, and moved at a frenetic pace (a few years later, Victoire Doutreleau, with her short, brown hair, would become a symbol of youthful energy. Unlike the traditional models of the maison, she infused the garments with an astonishingly modern air).
The devastating death of Dior at the age of 52 catapulted his right-hand man, Yves Saint Laurent, to the forefront, with the responsibility of carrying the weight of the colossal temple on his shoulders at just 21 years old. He brought youth and energy to the clothes – in just two years he did more than other colleagues would do in 30 – but his Beat autumn 1960 show, inspired by the existentialist art that was bubbling on the Left Bank of Paris, went too far for the hallowed salons of Dior. If Saint Laurent had previously been helped to avoid the call-up, there were no longer any qualms about losing sight of him (the aforementioned Dior show served, however, as an early precursor to fashion as provocation, something that would soon bear much more fruit). Soon, in December 1961, Saint Laurent was already leading his own maison, backed by his boyfriend, Pierre Bergé, and Doutreleau as his muse. And although his first collections (presented at the former residence of Jean-Louis Forain, a daring Impressionist painter) were at the pinnacle of good taste, by 1966, tired of haute couture appealing only to a limited elite of ultra-rich clients, he launched his Rive Gauche line of prêt-à-porter. Saint Laurent captured the youthful rebellion with simple pieces in bright colors, a spirit that would soon be seconded by Courrèges and Paco Rabanne (the former came from working as a tailor for Balenciaga; the latter from working miracles with buttons). Courrèges paraded women like Françoise Hardy – flat-chested, mini-skirted, with childlike pigtails – who swayed expressively to the rhythm of jazz in line with the new wave. Everything straight cuts; not a curve (as in Who Are You, Polly Maggoo? or Blow-Up, for that matter).
With Saint Laurent, a flood of new, young clientele (and hangers-on) burst onto the scene. Catherine Deneuve, Betty Catroux, Paloma Picasso, Marisa Berenson, Nan Kempner, and Loulou de la Falaise couldn’t have been more unlike the women Dior had dressed. Soon, the enthusiasm spread to haute couture (decades later, with Saint Laurent already retired, I was sitting next to Deneuve waiting – an eternity – for a couture show by Gaultier to start when, out of the blue, despite looking like the typical decorous client, she let out a piercing shriek that went to the bone, similar to the one Arab women make at weddings and funerals. Gaultier started right after). It was Halston, however, who best embodied the golden age – and the catwalks – of 1970s New York, with a showroom in Olympic Tower, in the heart of Manhattan, frequented by his beloved Bianca Jagger, Andy Warhol, and Jacqueline Kennedy, among many other names, all of them impeccably dressed like their Halstonettes on the runway: Pat Cleveland, Karen Bjornson, or Anjelica Huston, just to start. When I first attended the New York shows in 1986 – the ones making waves were Calvin Klein, Ralph Lauren, Donna Karan, and Perry Ellis – Halston, shortly before a god of American fashion, was running a failing business and in two years would begin to fade due to the ravages of AIDS. And while Perry held a vibrant and fun autumn 1986 show, when he came out to take a bow at the end, frail and gaunt, he had to be supported by two assistants. He died about three weeks later. Other designers, like Oscar de la Renta, Bill Blass, and Carolyne Roehm, brought their clothes to the ladies of the Upper East Side – Brooke Astor, Nancy Kissinger, Barbara Walters – who arrived at the event wearing key pieces from the previous season.
London in the 1980s, of course, was a hive of talent and overflowing joy. If there was a show, I would dress head to toe in John Galliano: a man’s skirt, a bullfighter’s jacket, and a huge shirt made of dyed cotton patches. Ready to impress. David Holah and Stevie Stewart were working avant-garde magic at BodyMap, using leggings, designs by Hilde Smith, Lycra tops, and silhouettes so big that they spanned all sizes, with choreographer Michael Clark at the head of long casts of friends and family of all ages. Leigh Bowery, from Sunshine, Australia, quickly conquered the Cha Cha Club and Camden Palace, and in 1985 opened Taboo – so named because, there, nothing was. His proposal of extremes where everything was allowed inflamed the audience. Leigh delighted us by blurring the genders, and his world – both on and off the runway – was wild, outrageous, pure fantasy. His life and his people were projected in his art, in his fashion. John Galliano was about to graduate from Saint Martins as a fashion illustrator when his sophisticated design tutor, Sheridan Barnett, went crazy over the drawings in his final project and convinced him to put on a show with those pieces. The result: Les Incroyables; and although the show lasted only three minutes, what I saw there was etched in my memory forever, with that cast of friends and singular people recruited on his travels, shouting like the French Revolution in bursts of extreme energy. The collection sold out at Browns. Barbra Streisand and Diana Ross, the first to buy.
The UK, certainly, was the ideal place to innovate, but the worst place to sell. Galliano therefore set course for Paris, and Paris in the 1980s was Karl Lagerfeld: bold, witty, highly sophisticated. “I’m working class,” he used to say, and he wasn’t lying: he worked non-stop, 24-7, at Chloé at the beginning of the decade – where he’d been since the 1960s – then, of course, at Chanel, since 1983. In those days, the maison was a non-entity; the models, boring; the clients, wealthy ladies, oblivious to the new. Karl changed everything, both in the atelier and on the runway: Inès de la Fressange, with her toned-down silhouette, became his emblem, quickly eclipsing the rest of the models. However, by the late 1980s, Inès was out and Victoire de Castellane – fleshy, mischievous, with her black can-cans and corsets – was in. Next came bringing all the supermodels to his runway, although Claudia Schiffer had to wear specially made low-heeled shoes, as she couldn’t yet hold herself on the dizzying heights worn by experienced catwalk models.
I went to my first Chanel show in 1984, not to the public event at the Paris Opera House, but to a presentation hours later on Rue Cambon. The clothes seemed a little angular to me, although, indeed, different from everything else. But, from then on, I witnessed practically all of Karl’s haute couture and prêt-à-porter shows, and I was soon captivated. Because, simply, he was an inexhaustible source of ideas and knew how to keep you on the edge of your seat. Karl reimagined the experience of the catwalks with extraordinary productions, such as the mind-blowing “in the supermarket” show (autumn-winter 2014), decked out with hundreds of re-labeled products for the occasion, girls aisle by aisle with their freshly baked Chanels. Gianni Versace did the same towards the end of the decade: changing the paradigm of mannequins in favor of models who set fire to the pages of glossy magazines, so that the crux of a Versace show was less about the clothes and more about how Christy, Naomi, Linda, and Cindy wore those clothes. The musical atmosphere – how can we forget the tops singing Freedom! ’90 by George Michael in the autumn-winter 1991 of the Italian firm – helped to turn the shows into a cultural event.
There was also Christian Lacroix, whose magical couture shows, lasting a little over three quarters of an hour (Saint Laurent’s lasted two), unleashed applause of ecstasy among my colleagues with each new dress and showers of red carnations – a timely courtesy from the house in the seats – for the triumphant appearance of the master. It’s funny that, being diametrically opposed, Christian was the first to tell me about Helmut Lang. I went to see what Lang was doing, and, rather perplexed, I chose a tracht linen jacket with mismatched buttons for a photo shoot. But in the 1990s, Lang was the thing. Women and men paraded like automatons on his catwalks, fast as bullets, unveiling a completely new way to present clothes without any fuss. Calvin Klein and his charming wife, Kelly, went to see him, were fascinated, and the following season, they presented their clothes exactly the same way. The supermodels who once enlivened Klein’s catwalk were now giving way to the new girls of the moment: hair pulled back, natural makeup. Kate Moss was, of course, one of them.
When I missed Martin Margiela’s first show, I flew straight to his remote showroom, where a group of people dressed in white coats explained the astonishing pieces to me almost as if they were rare works of art. I was at his next show, and although his clothes were incomprehensible to me – I’m more of a Lacroix wide-brimmed hat kind of guy – I had to grudgingly admit that the pieces had a certain indescribable charm on distracted-looking models who didn’t need a thousand layers of makeup. Soon, I couldn’t help but notice the four telltale stitches that always finished off the back of his creations, worn by all the fashionistas who flocked to all his events. The 1990s also witnessed the rise of Lee Alexander McQueen, who arrived screaming and kicking with strange shows, more incendiary than seductive. They had something unsettling: you started to worry about the integrity of those embodiments of Lee’s fantasies. In 20 years of covering fashion shows, I had never seen anything like it. He presented his autumn-winter 1996 show in New York for the second time – after a London premiere at Christ Church Spitalfields – so that the US could get a taste of what was going on. It was a chaotic scene, with hundreds of people trying unsuccessfully to get into a disused synagogue, while inside, models strutted in low-cut trousers, ripped corsets, and lace bonnets. McQueen continued to provide disturbing moments: robots spraying Shalom Harlow and her flying dress with spray paint (spring-summer 1999); the insane psychiatric-style show (spring-summer 2001); or It’s Only a Game, the models as chess pieces (spring-summer 2005).
Galliano’s brutal (and often provocative) genius, meanwhile, had supplied the Parisian scene with several remarkable collections, but with no money to put together a full collection, the designer was about to be left without an autumn-winter 1994 show. Three weeks before the curtain went up, André Leon Talley warned him that if he didn’t show, the world would soon lose interest, and even he would have to pack his bags. With those words burning in his ears, he finished a collection, got the money, the models (no less than Kate Moss, Naomi Campbell, Christy Turlington, Helena Christensen, and Linda Evangelista rushed to help him for free) and a sublime location (the 17th century house of São Schlumberger). The rest, of course, is history. Then came Givenchy and Dior. I melted with every collection, starting with the sublime opening of his first haute couture proposal for Givenchy, when those ladies appeared in huge ball gowns à la Charles Frederick Worth, perched like in the story on a pile of mattresses and enveloped in fiery music (at the hands of DJ Jeremy Healy). Dior was the jackpot, each show more extravagant than the last. The presentations with his eponymous brand, John Galliano, also left wonders, from models in 1950s-cut suits strutting alongside a vintage car (spring-summer 1995) to a catwalk that emulated the snow-covered rooftops of Paris (autumn-winter 1995).
Other designers, such as the British-Cypriot Hussein Chalayan, were bringing a convincing dose of cerebral mastery to fashion. I recommended to Anna Wintour that she go see the child prodigy fresh out of Central Saint Martins, although I should have thought twice, especially warning her of the danger of crossing the metal grid stairs leading to his remote outdoor location in Manolos. Chalayan’s PR, who spoke at a dizzying pace with a difficult-to-follow Glasgow accent, explained that the garments in the collection had been buried underground. Anna, who didn’t understand anything, was stunned. Of course, by the turn of the millennium, Chalayan was already enthralling her, as he was enchanted by the autumn-winter 2000 show, with Natalia Semanova finishing off, tucked inside a 1950s coffee table that transformed into a rigid skirt.
Just a few years earlier, the sword fight between Prada and Gucci emerged at Milan Fashion Week. On the autumn-winter 1995 catwalk, Tom Ford launched his electrifying 1970s-inspired collection for Gucci with a show that transported me back to what a great night at Studio 54 would have been like. Tom’s name became synonymous with Gucci, with beautiful models of both sexes shimmering against a perpetually black catwalk. That same season, Miuccia Prada presented polished pieces with 1960s echoes: clean cuts, tailoring, uniformed models on a white background. Take your pick. What was happening in Milan mattered; and fashion shows started to move beyond mere exhibitions to become powerful marketing tools and brand positioning, with fans clamouring at the doors, surrounding the event with an aura of idolatry. It’s no wonder that getting into a Gucci show at the time was a prestigious feat.
In the US, the VIP rows at the shows were no longer just filled with buyers and fashion editors, but with actresses and socialites (later, they were even paid to attend), who would happily dress up in their finery for morning shows with their shoes fresh off the latest catwalks. By autumn 2008, fashion bloggers were not just there, but were occupying the front row of Dolce & Gabbana – and I was more amazed than ever. Once I took a deep breath, I realized the mission they had: to reach millions of young people, crazy for fashion. When, in October 2018, Valentino and his then designer Pierpaolo Piccioli invited the press to Tokyo to witness the firm’s latest cruise collection, I saw that the brand representatives surrounding the bloggers were very different from those attending the fashion press or myself, in order to fine-tune the visual experiences that, on the other hand, digital journalists reproduced in real time. I found it fascinating. Soon, street style photographers, like Scott Schuman and Phil Oh, started capturing influencers on their way to the shows, people who sometimes even took center stage over what was happening inside.
Today, you go to a show – be it Marc Jacobs (his Louis Vuitton autumn-winter 2012, the beautiful image of the models riding an old train), Rick Owens (spring-summer 2014, those formidable dancers with hard expressions), Loewe (Jonathan Anderson’s vintage menswear in autumn-winter 2024), the Central Saint Martins graduation shows, or so many, many others – and the first look comes out: sparkling, innovative, revealing. You know there are thousands of people seeing the same thing as you at the same time, from the comfort of their homes or offices; but still there’s something indescribable, something you can touch, savor, being there in person. A magical feeling washes over you. It doesn’t matter how exhausted you are, how much it cost you to get there, or how burned out fashion may be. Because I’ve seen it. Photography Mikael Jansson. Styling IB Kamara. Hair: Eugene Souleiman. Makeup: Karin Westerlund. Manicure: Ama Quashie. Set design: Samuel Overs. Production: Erin Fee Productions. Models: Ugbad Abdi, Jawara Alleyne, Ennis Ansah, Joe Bates, Siri Castres, Alex Consani, Lux Gillespie, Amelia Gray, Stephen Isaac-Wilson, Soyeong Jang, Angelina Kendall, Jill Kortleve, Iris Law, Tomos MacDonnell, Kacion Mayers, Lila Moss, Stephanie Odonkor, Ace Rahman, Celina Ralph, Phoebe Shardlow, Lulu Tenney, Milla Freya Walker, Judith Watt, Anok Yai, Lina Zhang.
