Vogue 'Insider' Scoop: Evolution of the Runway

Source: Vogue

Vogue offered club members unique insight into the birth and evolution of the modern fashion show with two recent events, last fall’s Forces of Fashion in New York City and a current museum exhibition, “Inventing the Runway,” at the Lightroom in London.

In his Paris salons of the 1860s, Charles Frederick Worth, the “father of haute couture,” set the trend for replacing mannequins with human models for his fashion shows, which were exclusive to his clients.

Because designers were worried their designs would be stolen, it wasn’t until after World War II that they finally permitted photographers to attend shows. However, the most exclusive fashion shows arrived during the 1950s, when designers began inviting photographers, buyers for the pret-a-porter shows, and clients including monarchs, socialites and aristocrats.

 At Forces of Fashion on October 16th, 2024, Vogue Editor in Chief Anna Wintour delivered an eloquent welcome speech in which she mentioned the “quietness and rigidity” of the typical fashion show in Paris during that glamorous 1950s.

 “If you go back to the ‘50s in postwar-Paris, you would sit for two hours or more to watch a fashion show, and you also had to wear a black tie,” she said. “It was completely silent. No music. No pictures. No photographers.”

 However, that didn’t mean early fashion shows, or “fashion parades,” always lacked background sensorial drama.

 Take British fashion designer Lady Duff Gordon’s 1901 collection, “Gowns of Emotion”, the first presentation to incorporate forms of entertainment such as music and art.

We saw, probably for the first time, models appearing on a stage with scenery, lighting and music,” London College of Fashion lecturer Maria Constantino states in Harper’s Bazaar.

 In the latter half of the twentieth century, fashion shows rebounded to their prewar exaggerations.

In the 1960s and 1970s, fashion designers such as Mary Quant and Andre Courrèges reverted to Lady Duff Gordon’s presentation methodology by having their models move and dance more freely on the catwalk.

Then came the 1980s and 1990s, when our more familiar designers used sporting venues for their fashion shows. Take Thierry Mugler’s presentation in 1984 at the Zénith stadium in Paris and that of Yves Saint Laurent in his fall/winter 1998 haute couture show at the Stade de France prior to the World Cup final.

At that point in time, the attitudes of the fashion industry were shifting from exclusive to more diverse and accessible for the public via television. This was before the advent of social media and the wider use of the internet, when such “social events” were livestreamed.

Then in 2007, the late and legendary Karl Lagerfeld daringly chose the Great Wall of China for Fendi’s collection showcase..

“His true tour de force may have been the time that he turned the Great Wall of China into a runway for Fendi in 2007, flying in 500 VIP guests to witness the monumental (no pun intended) event,” Sara Idacavage wrote in Fashionista.

Vogue also offered access to a 360-degree video wall presentation in the meeting room as well as access to the archive of the slowly evolving catwalks over the past century. Attendees could watch brief segments of numerous shows, including Louis Vuitton’s Resort 2017 fashion show, which took place in Brazil’s Museu de Arte Contemporanea de Niteroi.

To join the Vogue Club, all you have to do is sign up on the Vogue Club page with your credit card information. From my personal experience, the best aspects of the membership were the Forces of Fashion events and getting the opportunity to network with the magazine’s journalists. The latter was a dream come true.