Robin Givhan on the Historic Fashion Smackdown Between France and America
The Battle of Versailles Fashion Show, November 28, 1973 / Corbis
Robin Givhan, the Washington Post fashion journalist knows her way around a fashion show. So it’s no surprise that this Pulitzer Prize winning writer’s first book is about one of the most epic: The Battle of Versailles: The Night American Fashion Stumbled into the Spotlight and Made History, which comes out today.
In it, she tells the story of a 1973 fashion show fundraiser for the Versailles palace in France. Five French designers (Yves Saint Laurent, Hubert de Givenchy, Pierre Cardin, Emanuel Ungaro, and Marc Bohan of Christian Dior were pitted against five American underdogs: Oscar de la Renta, Bill Blass, Anne Klein, Halston, and Stephen Burrows. Givhan describes Halston referring to himself in the third person and storming out of various meetings, hilarious cameos from Liza Minnelli and Josephine Baker, who both performed that night, and a plane of models partying their way across the Atlantic. She also explains the historical significance of the event. It was a time when traditional, even fusty, French couture was, well, falling out of fashion and American designers, with their youthful, more sporty appeal, were on the rise. And with a diverse group of models (almost one-third were black) pointed optimistically not only to a more integrated fashion industry but a changing society.
Yahoo Style spoke to Givhan about researching the book, the couture market, and who would compete in a Battle of Versailles today.
Liz Minelli performing at the Battle of Versailles, November 28, 1973 / Getty Images
YAHOO STYLE: You just finished the fashion shows. What were the standouts?
ROBIN GIVHAN: Comme des Garçons was the most moving and provocative- taking on loss and death. Dries Van Noten was simply beautiful, beautiful clothes that made you want to shop.
YS: How did you get interested in the Battle of Versailles and that moment in fashion history?
RG: I’d heard bits and pieces of the story while I was reporting on other topics. I did a feature on Stephen Burrows a while back when he was working on resurrecting his brand and he mentioned the show. Bill Blass discussed it in his memoir. But I didn’t consider it a subject for a book until the Metropolitan Museum of Art hosted a luncheon in 2011 to honor the black models who had participated in the show. That event really brought the moment to life.
YS: What was the research process like?
RG: My first goal was to talk to the surviving American designers, as well as the French participants. I talked to the models and some of the guests and folks who were behind the scenes. The hard part was piecing it all together. Everyone remembered different pieces and some remembered the same moment in conflicting ways.
YS: The couture clientele is shrinking. Will it ever die out?
RG: I think it will continue to shrink - with occasional upticks as a new group of wealthy women discover it. I think of it as the sort of Bentley or Ferrari of fashion. It will always have a customer but they’ll be in their own little isolated world.
YS: Where is fashion innovation taking place now?
RG: I see it in street wear, in menswear.
YS: You write about sportswear being in service to women rather than a celebration of the designer. What do you think of the triumph of sportswear over couture?
RG: I think it was inevitable, given the way the culture was changing. Ten years from now, I wouldn’t be stunned to see street wear triumph over more formal sportswear. There will always be people who love the process of dressing up - people who see a certain responsibility to always look their best as a matter of courtesy. But we are increasingly informal. More of us work from home. Who do we have to dress up for anymore? I hope that doesn’t happen. The world will be less interesting visually.
YS: Okay, then if there were a similar USA vs. France battle today, who would be in it?
RG: That’s a tough question because so much of the Versailles event was a combination of popularity, financial success and personal politics. And fashion is so global now. Who’s to say what really constitutes a French house? But I’d have to guess that Paris would offer up Hedi Slimane, Riccardo Tisci and Alber Elbaz and Karl Lagerfeld. Maybe they’d choose a woman this time? Sarah Burton? Phoebe Philo? On the US side, surely Marc Jacobs, and Ralph Lauren. Donna Karan would resonate since she was at the original show as Anne Klein’s assistant. Thom Browne would be interesting. So would Proenza Schouler, Tracy Reese or Diane Von Furstenberg.
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