Prologue

On November 28, 1973, the world’s social elite— men in dashing tuxedos and
women dripping with diamonds—gathered in the majestic Théâtre Gabriel at the
Palace of Versailles. Originally conceived as a publicity stunt and fund-raiser
for the dilapidated French landmark, the Grand Divertissement à Versailles
had become an international fashion extravaganza, bloated with pomp and
passion. Style writers and society columnists; royalty, tycoons, diplomats, and
politicians; the crème de la crème of the jet set; stagehands, set designers, bur-
lesque dancers, ballet stars, drag queens, glamorous models, famous choreo-
graphers, and one Academy Award– winning triple threat all watched in eager
anticipation as five kings of French fashion faced off against five unsung
American designers. By the time the spotlight dimmed and the curtain came
down on the evening’s spectacle, fashion history had been made and an industry
had been forever transformed.

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 Introduction

In the Wings

A
t the close of the twentieth century, there was perhaps no
brand that better represented the swaggering confidence
of American fashion than that of Bill Blass. In his golden
decade of the 1980s and into the early ’90s, Blass was a household name
synonymous with American style as personified by society dames
and  tomboyish beauties. He was a smooth gentleman walker, chum to
First  Lady Nancy Reagan. And he had grown his company to a
$500-million-a-year business fueled by licenses for everything from
luggage to the Lincoln Continental Mark series of fancy sedans. But it
wasn’t always that way. Like most designers of his generation, for much
of his career, Blass was nothing more than a workaday guy trying to get
a little respect in an industry dominated by the French. He stood in the
wings of the industry, waiting for his chance at center stage. When it
came, in the late autumn of 1973, he and four of his fellow American de-
signers grabbed it and forever altered the course of fashion history.
Blass was a handsome midwestern fellow who came of age at a time
when Indiana wasn’t just flyover country; it was nowhere. Fresh from the
army, he arrived in New York in the late 1940s wanting to work in fashion

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 The Battle of Versailles

and live a glamorous life. With a hint of a fake British accent picked up
from the Hollywood films of the day, he found his first job as a sketch
artist—a kind of entry-level position once occupied by some of the now-
great names in the business. But he quickly discovered that fashion, as it
was practiced in New York’s Garment District back then, was nothing
more than a daily grind of kowtowing to the demands of grim factory
bosses, rather than the boldly creative career he had envisioned. When
he won his first big promotion, he went from sketching to designing, but
designing meant merely producing cheap copies of Balenciaga and Chris-
tian Dior dresses for American manufacturers like Anna Miller and Co.
and later Maurice Rentner.
Invention didn’t happen in America; it happened in France.
From the days of the French monarchy through World War II, French
designers dictated fashion with a confident strut born of fiercely pro-
tected tradition, national character, and mythology. A shift in hemlines
in the Paris ateliers reverberated throughout the retail world like an
encyclical from the Vatican. Whatever Paris said, the wealthiest and
most beautiful— and thereby the most influential—women all over the
world took heed. Other ladies across social and economic classes then
fell in line.
But by the 1960s, society had evolved and world politics had dis-
rupted the fashion system. A handful of prescient retailers in New York
and Chicago recognized an opportunity and opened their doors to a new
kind of fashion: American. Homegrown designers began slowly crawl-
ing from the backrooms of manufacturers and into the light. For the first
time, American designers were beginning to find their voices. And what
they had to say was being published by the newly prominent trade tab-
loid Women’s Wear Daily. The American fashion industry had sprung to
life.
In 1960, Blass’s name was added to the label at Maurice Rentner; he
was now being publicly credited for his work. He continued to claw his

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 In the Wings

way forward. He excelled at the art of socializing. Sexually ambiguous,

he made himself indispensable to a group of wealthy women in constant
need of going-out companions who posed no threat to their distracted hus-
bands. By 1970, Blass had established himself as a man-about-town with
important connections and an eye for jaunty style. He bought out his em-
ployer, and Maurice Rentner was renamed Bill Blass Ltd. He was crawl-
ing toward the light.
But being seen as a competent businessman and being respected as a
titan of imagination, sophistication, and influence are two separate
things. It wasn’t until a snowy evening in 1973 that public perception of
Blass shifted. On November 28, about an hour outside Paris at the his-
toric Palace of Versailles, Blass, fifty-one, made a play for dignity. By the
end of the evening, Blass and four other American designers went from
being considered merely savvy industrialists to being thought of as
innovative, creative, and significant. And their influence reverberates
today.
Working alongside Blass that night was his old friend Oscar de la
Renta, forty-one, who had built his career the same way Blass had—
catering to America’s social elite, all the while nibbling at the edges of
French dominance. With them stood Halston, forty-one, a tall, slender,
handsome gay man who had created a famous public persona for himself
and catered to celebrity clients. His eyes shielded by sunglasses, his
grooming impeccable, his ego outlandishly plus-size, Halston’s identity
boiled down to a single moniker. Before his Versailles debut, the French
had known of his fame, but he had not yet won their respect. The woman
among these gentlemen designers, Anne Klein, had made a name for
herself by catering to the burgeoning population of professional women;
her designs had an artistic edge and a dollop of plain old fun, and the
strategy had paid off handsomely. By the time her work was shown on
the Versailles stage, the fifty-year-old Klein was a financially successful
businesswoman who had kick- started the industry habit of vanity

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 The Battle of Versailles

sizing— that naughty practice of cutting a dress with the generous girth
of a size 14, but labeling it a 10. Like all the Americans, Klein made
sportswear, which the French considered practical, commercial, and ba-
nal. Her mix-and-match, industrially produced separates were the lowest
of the low in fashion’s hierarchy, which was topped by French haute cou-
ture. But her sportswear was also disrespected by her own colleagues as
it was wholly utilitarian, in service to women, rather than in celebration
of the designer. Fifth in this group of aspiring American designers was
Stephen Burrows. At thirty, Burrows was a young African American whiz
kid at home in the seventies party atmosphere. News of his daring use of
color and rhapsodic baring of the body had made its way to Paris, and
the French were curious. Burrows was both naive and self-absorbed; he
was on the hunt for an adventure.
Each of these designers came to Versailles with a story to tell. Blass
and de la Renta had specters of insecurity to silence. Halston was looking
to prove that his star power was not parochial but international. Klein
wanted to add critical success to her commercial triumphs. And Bur-
rows wanted to dress the world.
They were a group of friends, rivals, and total strangers who had
been brought together to represent the American fashion industry. They
were competing egos. They were disorganized. For four months leading
up to this Wednesday night, there had been tears, screaming matches,
backbiting, and demands to just “shut up.” They’d come with three dozen
professional runway models to present their ready-to-wear to an interna-
tional audience. Ten of those models were black— an unusually high
proportion that reflected 1970s politics, fashion economics, and social
tensions.
The American designers were ostensibly guests of five of their French
counterparts, the kings and princes of the industry: Hubert de Givenchy,
Yves Saint Laurent, Emanuel Ungaro, Pierre Cardin, and Marc Bohan of
Christian Dior. Unlike the Americans, these Frenchmen were rooted in
the painstaking craftsmanship of haute couture, a tradition that had dom-

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 In the Wings

inated French fashion since the nineteenth century. Where the Americans
came to Versailles trying to prove something, to show the world their
scrappy, boundary-breaking creativity, the French arrived confidently pre-
pared to impress by stature and extravagance.
The French were the star attractions; the Americans were the chorus
girls. But in this case, it was the chorus girls, their stomachs knotted with
fear as they prepared to take the stage, who stole the show.

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