By the 70s, the Palace of Versailles had fallen into disrepair. The centuries-old castle was infested with termites and oozes were gushing from its gilded ceilings. Needing money for restoration, Versailles’ chief curator Gérald Van der Kemp sought the advice of fashion publisher and CFDA founder Eleanor Lambert, who dreamed up the fundraiser that launched WWD’s “Battle of Versailles.”
Fifty years ago, 10 designers embarked on a stylish clash that would solidify America’s couturiers as fashion’s forces to be reckoned with. As former WWD editor-in-chief John B. Fairchild wrote in 1973, “Americans came, they planted, they conquered.”
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Ahead, a look at the legendary Battle of Versailles.
Which designers went “to war”?
The event pitted French and American fashion designers against each other; Oscar de la Renta, Halston, Stephen Burrows, Bill Blass, and Anne Klein—all of whom were Lambert’s clients—made up the second group. Together they took on Yves Saint Laurent, Hubert de Givenchy, Emmanuel Ungaro, Pierre Cardin and Christian Dior’s then-creative director Marc Bohan.
What happened at the Battle of Versailles?
Each designer came up with eight unique looks, some of which were not completed until the early morning hours of November 28.
Many of the models in the show had never been to Paris before. “They got off the bus and kissed the ground, they were so happy,” Pat Cleveland said at WWD’s Apparel & Retail CEO Summit earlier this month, recalling a romantic scene of snow-covered cobblestones outside Versailles.
But the view inside was not romantic at all; Near-freezing temperatures left the poorly ventilated palace cool. The American team’s greeting from the French was colder.
“There was no toilet paper in the bathroom. It was terrible,” Burrows said at the Apparel and Retail CEO Summit. “They made the girls work there all day and didn’t feed them.”
The Gallic team occupied most of the daytime rehearsal hours, which meant that the Americans had no choice but to train late into the evening. That wasn’t the only pre-show mistake: a mix-up in measurements resulted in Joe Eula’s hand-painted background being scrapped.
This, among other mistakes, nearly caused Halston to withdraw from the competition. Selected to perform in the American segment, the designer’s friend and muse Liza Minnelli, with the zeal of a true thespian, convinced him that the show must go on.
The French spared no expense in staging an elaborate production that lasted many hours; He spent about $30,000 on sets and props, including a pumpkin carriage and a carriage pulled by rhinos. The 40-person orchestra, noble dancer Rudolf Nureyev and legendary showgirl Josephine Baker also offered their talents to the team.
The Americans, by contrast, adopted a simpler approach and completed their presentation in 30 minutes. Taped music and naked spotlights illuminated the stage of the Royal Opera House.
While the Americans had the help of showbiz talent (and Minnelli’s godmother) Kay Thompson, who helped with the choreography, it was the models who had to sell the designer clothes, which were fairly basic compared to their French counterparts.
“We were trying to bring the clothes to life,” Cleveland said in a 2020 interview with InStyle. “They were bodies moving under the banner of creativity and design.”
What Americans lacked in flashiness, they made up for in practicality: airy, unstructured ensembles like those displayed by Halston and Burrows marked an innovative shift from the drab silhouettes of old. Their liberating approach to dressing women was synonymous with changing attitudes towards feminism and sexuality in the decade.
“The French were shocked by American clothing,” recalled Donna Karan, who served as Klein’s assistant during the war. “’What do you mean you don’t have hooks and eyes and you just wear them?’ Americans were too far into the future. It was about the ease of dressing from day to night,” she told WWD in 2020.
American designers weren’t the only ones breaking the mould; Models-turned-leading actors turned into leading actors who twirled around the stage hands-free, unlike their catwalk contemporaries who at the time typically strutted around with numbered cards.
Who won the Battle of Versailles?
Initially, the possibility of the Americans outmaneuvering the French seemed unlikely. “Everyone thought it was a joke,” author Marcellas Reynolds told InStyle in 2020. “They thought this was a lock for European designers.”
In the end, the winners were the oppressed. The audience, including names such as Grace Kelly and Andy Warhol, could not hide their excitement after the American presentation.
Burrows: “Bravo!” “They started screaming, kicking the ground and throwing their programs into the air,” he said. “It was mind-blowing how they reacted. The French are generally very dignified.”
How did the Battle of Versailles change the fashion industry?
America’s triumph at Versailles became even more evident in the coming years, as US licensing firms that had once favored French designers began to make use of local names such as de la Renta and Blass.
The war also raised the profiles of many Black supermodels, including Cleveland, Bethann Hardison, Alva Chinn and Billie Blair.
“This was the beginning of my international career,” Chinn said at the WWD Apparel and Retail CEO Summit in October.
While brands like Courrèges, Ungaro, and Saint Laurent have been hiring Black models since at least the ’60s, they became even more visible after Versailles. WWD’s then-Paris bureau chief André Leon Talley reported in 1979 that Givenchy was “the first couturier to have an all-black cabinet.”
How is the Battle of Versailles still relevant today?
The Metropolitan Museum of Art commemorated the Battle of Versailles in a 1993 exhibition. Twenty years later, Tom Ford paid tribute to the event at the same museum, curating a Battle of Versailles-themed gallery during the Costume Institute’s “In America: An Anthology of Fashion” exhibition.
In 2015, former Washington Post fashion editor Robin Givhan wrote a book about the war titled “The Night American Fashion Risen and Made History.”
The iconic storefront was also the subject of two documentaries, including Deborah Riley Draper’s “Versailles ’73: American Runway Revolution.” Draper has plans to adapt it into a narrative feature by 2023.
Launch Gallery: A Look at the 1973 Battle of Versailles Fashion Show
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