The Battle of Versailles

VERSAILLES! It is wonderfully beautiful! You gaze and stare and try to understand that it is real, that it is on the earth, that it is not the Garden of Eden—but your brain grows giddy, stupefied by the world of beauty around you, and you half believe you are the dupe of an exquisite dream. —MARK TWAIN1

The evening of Wednesday, November 28, 1973, as guests began arriving at Versailles, the palace glowed under a full moon and through a scrim of light snow—the first dusting of the season. Red-uniformed, saber-wielding gendarmes flanked the gilded palace gates, along with some one hundred footmen in eighteenth-century white powdered wigs and livery. Marie-Hélène de Rothschild, dressed in a green, ostrich-trimmed gown by Yves Saint Laurent and with solitary diamonds pinned in her thick hair, greeted guests: brushing kisses on the cheeks of the French and offering handshakes to the Americans.2

“You’d never seen anything more beautiful in your life,” recalls Tom Fallon.3

The pale blue invitations, with gold script, announced that the Grand Divertissement à Versailles was to begin promptly at 9 p.m. It also prescribed black tie for men and long gowns for women. Guests expected the Versailles gala to be another in a series of notable parties of the era that they had all attended: Truman Capote’s Black and White Ball in New York, the Proust Ball, the Oriental Ball. The Versailles gala was, of course, a charity event, but mostly it was old friends gathering for a deliciously decadent evening.

In the decades since the Versailles event, our culture has become more informal and restrained, even at its poshest moments. In Washington, every four years, the presidential inauguration resonates with history and gravitas, but an inaugural ball is a crowded, unglamorous affair akin to an oversubscribed wedding reception. Washington still has a fair number of black-tie soirees in the ballrooms of embassies and the like, but the level of glamour is moderated by political correctness and diplomatic decorum. The Costume Institute gala at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art is known for its dazzling display of runway fashion, but it does not have the show of jewels—many owned, not just borrowed—that blinded the eye at Versailles. That November night, the family jewels were proudly displayed; Princess Grace of Monaco, who was a guest of the Rothschilds, even wore a tiara, which she paired with a cream-colored Madame Grès gown.

“There were such jewels!” recalls Donna Karan. “There were jewels on top of jewels, tiaras on top of tiaras.” 4 And scattered discreetly through the crowd were security guards keeping a watchful eye over the many millions of dollars’ worth of precious gems tucked into glistening cleavages and pinned into skyward bouffants.

“I had my own jewels, but I was also loaded with diamonds from Van Cleef and Arpels,” says guest Simone Levitt, whose husband William was considered the father of American suburbia with the creation of Levittown. “We had to have bodyguards, which was a pain in the neck. The bodyguard, wherever I was, there he was.”5

The Versailles gala was unabashedly, unashamedly jaw-dropping. “The hype of the thing was enough to make your eyeballs go up into your head,” recalls guest Lynn Wyatt. “You opened your eyes and you were just blinded by the splendor and beauty.” 6

The Chicago Tribune declared the Versailles guests to be “the most superbly turned out crowd seen in one place for a decade. Rivaling the show on stage, hundreds of famous and wealthy women sat in the tiered, basket-shaped marble, velvet, and gold Versailles opera [house] among their black-tuxedoed escorts, looking like flower bouquets in feathered chiffons, or with the glitter of mermaids in sequins.”7

There was no hint of or desire for discretion. Writer Eugenia Sheppard described “a brilliant, international audience all turned out in couture clothes and proving that made-to-order fashion is alive and well.” 8

Hélène Rochas wore a white chiffon Saint Laurent gown with oversized sleeves and a jeweled bib; her hair, in a single thick braid, wrapped around her head like a crown. São Schlumberger wore a caramel-colored gown by Givenchy to match her hair. Viola Loewy, wife of Raymond Loewy, the industrial designer who had worked for Studebaker, chose a knife-pleated tube dress by Pierre Cardin that was attached to a necklace of ruby-colored stones.

The Duchess of Windsor wore blue crepe Dior and dripped with sapphire jewelry. Gloria Guinness chose black chiffon from Yves Saint Laurent and accessorized the simple V-neck gown with glittering hoop earrings. And Paloma Picasso made a sentimental choice: a draped Madame Grès gown from the 1950s that had belonged to her mother.9

Patriotism held little sway in matters of personal style and reputation. Lyn Revson, for instance, wore a gown by Balmain. But a few guests did fly the flag of Seventh Avenue. Lily Auchincloss, a trustee at the Museum of Modern Art, wore a red chiffon Halston toga. And socialite C. Z. Guest chose a yellow Mainbocher open-back gown in chiffon with gold sequins.

“I wore a big, jersey black dress and I wrapped my head in a turban,” says Karan, who worked backstage that night. “It was long sleeves, very fitted in the breast, with a huge circular skirt.”10

Some of the guests had pulled strings to be there. The uninvited called in favors from friends who were already on that elite guest list. Others made their case to publicist Eleanor Lambert, insisting there’d been some terrible oversight; they clearly should have been on the list. Everyone relished the moment when they passed down the stone corridor and entered the Théâtre Gabriel. Even the most privileged among them immediately looked up, their eyes drawn skyward by the theater’s soaring height and the flashes of light bouncing off the myriad crystal chandeliers. The great French designers sat in private boxes, along with their Seventh Avenue guests and a few VIPs. Artist Andy Warhol, who had come to witness the boozy high-society kaffeeklatsch, sat in a prime box with Saint Laurent and Pierre Bergé. Only the designers’ assistants were allowed backstage. That’s how Rothschild wanted it.

“Ooh-la-la,” says Didier Grumbach. “It was magnificent.”11 He was twenty-six years old in 1973 and his family business held the license for Yves Saint Laurent ready-to-wear.

The guest list at Versailles was not a who’s who of boldface names in the way we might think of now. The main-floor seats—benches, really—and boxes were not filled with the famous actors and musicians of the day. This was not like the Academy Awards, where everywhere you look there’s an immediately recognizable face. Instead, the pews of Versailles overflowed with the burdens of history, the dignity of the state, the power of provenance and of extraordinarily dusty money. It was a bit like being in the Cathedral of the Holy Order of Social Stratification.

“It wasn’t very comfortable,” remembers journalist Pat Shelton, “but it was awfully pretty.”12

For the American designers, walking to their private boxes to watch the show felt like entering the Colosseum to be devoured by the lions. The Grande Divertissement à Versailles had not been organized as a competition, but through the media attention and human nature, it had become just that. The American designers, who’d agreed to the show because it promised to bring them publicity, now just wanted to survive it with their dignity intact. They’d spent days fighting with each other and wrestling with sets, music, and choreography that were still in disarray. They’d booked their models on the cheap. Would the young women have enough stage presence to bring the clothes to life? Their music was canned. Would everyone be able to hit their marks?

The American designers had gotten the gist of what the French had planned. It was going to be big. It was going to be sweeping. It would carry the weight of tradition.

But while the Americans worried they’d be dwarfed by the French spectacle, the French, who’d been expecting to easily dazzle and then gloat, began to worry that they’d overreached.

As the 720 ticketholders and representatives of the French state settled into their seats, Rothschild appeared from behind the royal blue stage curtains, with their gold fleur-de-lis design, to announce that the evening had netted more than $280,000—an amount akin to $1.5 million today.

After polite applause, the curtain opened on the French haute couture presentation. The orchestra began the whispering violin overture from Sergei Prokofiev’s Cinderella. The main set depicted the lushly painted forests of Versailles with a temple of love in the distance. The Cinderella pumpkin, constructed from cardboard and tinsel, rolled out for the Christian Dior presentation. French actress Danielle Darrieux introduced the segment. She was fifty-six years old but was described in the Washington Post as giving off “vibrations despite the inroads of time.”13 Marc Bohan designed the Dior collection, but his name appeared on neither the gilded invitation nor the evening’s program, with its advertisements from Revlon and Piaget, which guests were able to purchase for about $23. Bohan was merely a caretaker of the great fashion house. His collection was elegant and relatively austere, and mostly executed in shades of black and beige.

The historical record is slim on the details of the fashions that came down the runway that evening. The press at the time was more enamored with the social aspects of the event and dazzled by the plumage of the female guests; when the show began, reporters were dumbfounded and distracted by the French sets. No one bothered to mention the clothes.

“Marc Bohan’s fashions for Dior were completely dwarfed by a giant pumpkin that was rolled in for some reason to symbolize the Cinderella story, of all things,” marveled Eugenia Sheppard.14 The only Dior look anyone seemed to remember after the curtain came down was a black steamer coat, a kind of minimalist trench coat, cinched over skirts and jackets.

The French interspersed each designer’s presentation with additional musical performances and dramatic readings that gave the stagehands time to swap out sets. The transitions were jagged and jarring. Spaceships followed Cinderella. Bohemians preceded drag queens.

After the pumpkin rolled off stage, the curtain went up to reveal a two-dimensional cutout rocket ship emblazoned with the Cardin name. It was meant to symbolize the designer’s futuristic aesthetic. It wobbled and the sound effects screeched during its faux landing into a set piece choreographed by the South African–born, Paris-based dancer Peter Goss.

The models emerged from the rocket’s doorway wearing short, mod dresses with severe angles over dark tights. A black and mustard-colored jersey moon suit was paired with a gleaming, space-age headpiece. They “looked like gorgeous but decidedly earthbound creatures,” said the Washington Post.15 Cardin’s presentation, which included menswear, caused Women’s Wear Daily to marvel: “Would you believe a rocket in the forest at Versailles? Would you believe men in sleeveless jersey jumpsuits with vinyl jock straps? Would you believe thrust for takeoff?”16

The audience reaction was warm and polite but not particularly enthusiastic. As Pierre Bergé of Yves Saint Laurent watched the French portion of the show from his box seat, he remembers being chagrined that each segment was an event unto itself: “It was one house after another and not very cohesive. There was no blending.”17

The models, overwhelmingly white and veterans of couture, moved elegantly around the stage—heads high with long limbs in graceful repose. The women were splendid hangers. But not much more.

Emanuel Ungaro went third, which signaled the arrival of entertainers Jane Birkin and Louis Jourdan for a bit of a bohemian, Wild West romp. It was like a mash-up of Cat Ballou and Hair. Birkin wore a white T-shirt and micro-mini-shorts—panties, really—and Louis Jourdan wore peaked animal ears that left the audience confused as to whether he was meant to be a rhinoceros, cat, or, given the French party ethos of the day, more likely an unfortunate rendition of a Native American.

A wooden cart was rolled onto the stage and Ungaro’s models followed dressed in shades of rust, black, and gray. Trim coats were cinched over fluid trousers. A black mink jacket topped a black cashmere dress. He mixed prints and textures in the way that had made him famous, but the press simply lamented the “sawing” of the bass player who accompanied the whole crew on stage. “We were not dancing or anything. We were just moving around. I felt pretty stupid,” recalls model Gunilla Lindblad, who worked with Ungaro. “We were standing there and we had to move a little bit but I don’t remember the whole point.”18

Yves Saint Laurent’s work was highlighted by Zizi Jeanmaire, dressed in a men’s tails and singing “Just a Gigolo” in English. She was backed by plus-size female impersonators, more camp than convincing, wearing feather-adorned robes and jeweled headdresses accented with yet more feathers.

Saint Laurent’s segment, which referenced the 1930s, had as its official float an elongated antique car—cardboard, not real. It showed some sophistication, but it harkened back to an old-fashioned cabaret style instead of underscoring the youthful street culture that was informing his work. A floor-length, violet chiffon evening gown was cinched with a sash in tones of green ranging from deep forest to rich emerald. Chiffon dresses with bell sleeves were thickly trimmed in feathers, and cloaks swept the floor with regal grandeur.

Hubert de Givenchy closed the French presentation with a group of translucent evening gowns in floral-hued chiffon. “Shocking pink was the color of Givenchy’s long chiffon gown with slim skirt that burst into fullness at the knees,” noted the Chicago Tribune.19 Of all the French designers, he was the only one who’d created a wholly separate collection for Versailles. His work was full of romance and he had, perhaps, the least obtrusive of the floats with which to contend. His was a fairly modest basket of flowers that descended from the rafters against a set on which his name was spelled out in paillettes. Givenchy chose the French actress known as Capucine as his runway celebrity. Before going on to act in the Pink Panther films, she had modeled for Givenchy, as well as for Dior.20 After Givenchy’s segment, Rudolf Nureyev and Merle Park took to the stage to dance a pas de deux from Sleeping Beauty. Nice. But the audience was not wowed.

The French used the least extravagant set for their final two acts. The floats were, at last, gone. No rockets or pumpkins or forested wonderland. Instead, there was a simple backdrop of individual poles—stripper poles—for the benefit of fourteen dancers from the Crazy Horse cabaret. Opened in 1951 by Alain Bernardin on Avenue George V, Crazy Horse remains a well-known theater, specializing in burlesque. With its red velvet seating and lacquered wood walls, it has attracted a host of celebrities to its nightly shows.

At Versailles, the Crazy Horse dancers were swaddled in fluffy furs from Revillon, Christian Dior, Emanuel Ungaro, and Yves Saint Laurent. As the dancers wiggled and pranced, the furs slowly fell open to reveal naked bosoms and teasing glimpses of the tops of stockings.

“At the end, there was a long moment of almost complete nudity,” wrote Enid Nemy for the New York Times. “The coats were flung open to reveal sparkling G-strings, but whether they were couture or not, no one said.”21

The finale was Josephine Baker, who emerged onstage in her sequined, chocolate-colored catsuit, feather headdress, and fur. Accompanied by dancers choreographed by Dirk Sanders, she belted out an emphatic version of “Mon Pays et Paris.” “I have two loves,” she sang in French, “my country and Paris.” The audience, at last, cheered, “Bravo!”

The French segment ran nearly two hours. The audience received its conclusion with warm applause.

“The entire French half of the evening was built around the glories of the past,” declared Eugenia Sheppard. “Not even Nureyev dancing a pas de deux could have made the atmosphere any less than funereal.”22

With the clock ticking toward midnight, the audience streamed from its seats for intermission, during which they drank champagne and whiskey. The American designers feared how their simple little show would compare to such a spectacle. “My God, they’ve buried us alive,” Bill Blass fretted to his friend Fallon.23

But Blass misread the French audience. It was bored. “I knew it was a flop for France,” Bergé says.24

The French presentation had been elaborate, ostentatious, plodding, and disconnected. “It was beautiful but it was not the point,” Grumbach recalls. “What they showed was fabulous, but the spectators were just in a mood to have champagne and look at something.”25

After the short and blessedly boozy intermission, it was time for the second act.

“By the time the crowd filtered back to their velvet seats they were revved up for the American show,” wrote Jonathan Randal in the Washington Post.

Entertainers will often talk about the perils of being overrehearsed, that it purges any sense of spontaneity and serendipity from a performance. The Americans had nothing to worry about in that regard. Their dress rehearsal had been cursory at best.

Liza Minnelli, wearing Halston’s gray wide-legged trousers and camel turtleneck, with a red sweater draped around her neck and a fedora atop her head, once again pep-talked the models toward confidence for the opening number, the rewritten “Bonjour, Paris.”

“I’m going to run out onstage and hit the first note and you run out behind me,” Minnelli told the models. “The more natural it looks the better—just like people on the street seeing the Eiffel Tower for the first time. Tap each other on the shoulder; you’re not modeling, you’re acting. Make it look as natural as possible.”26

The models trotted out after her in a panoply of quintessential American sportswear contributed by all the participating designers, all in shades of beige: pea coats, trench coats, pleated skirts, pullover sweaters, shirtwaist dresses with their collars popped, easy trousers, and hats—broad brimmed, tipped to the side, pulled snug over their ears. The only backdrop was Joe Eula’s last-minute sketch of the Eiffel Tower. As Minnelli hit the final notes, Fallon heard the audience applaud. He heard cheers. Minnelli came racing backstage. “My God,” she exclaimed, “we got them.”

Anne Klein was up first. The designer put model Barbara Jackson in a beige leotard with cap sleeves—little more than a bathing suit, really. “She had me lead the group [of models] downstage. She wanted me to run down toward the audience, and then she said, ‘Kick your leg up!’ She wanted people to just see all legs,” recalls Jackson. “I wasn’t as flamboyant as Pat or Billie. I had a little funky quality to my walk. I would come out with a big grin on my face—happy to be there. I was very happy to be there. Ebony Fashion Fair was my training ground and it was more entertainment and not just showing fashion.… You just wanted to walk to the beat of that music and flip your hair.”27

Klein’s so-called Africa collection included black shirts, pleated skirts with abstracted elephant prints, djellabas, loose-fitting shirtdresses with dropped shoulders, and sexy two-piece dresses in beige with coordinating turbans. While the French models had moved with regal, self-conscious slowness, hands on hips, making precise pivot turns, the Americans were moving to the rhythms of prerecorded contemporary music. Klein used the soundtrack from Scorpio Rising, a 1963 cult film about gay, Nazi biker culture that incorporated early rock and roll music to tell its story. The music included songs by Elvis Presley, Martha Reeves and the Vandellas, and Ray Charles, artists embedded in our popular culture.

Kay Thompson had insisted that the models move at top speed. “Zoom, zoom, zoom! One, two, three! It was completely different from any kind of show,” says Enid Nemy.28

Originally, each designer had planned to show seventy-odd looks, but Blass forcefully argued for ruthless editing, believing a few well-chosen garments would have a bigger impact. Still, even with only about twenty looks each, that was at least 100 entrances. The models had to make whiplash-fast changes with the help of a few assistants—many of them amateurs recruited for the evening. Nicole Fischelis was a twenty-one-year-old French kid working in the Paris buying office of Saks Fifth Avenue when one of the store’s executives enlisted her help getting the models dressed. “I couldn’t say no,” Fischelis remembers. “To be in Versailles and to be backstage and have a view of what was going on—it was a big coup.”29

The backstage area was expansive, but it was crowded and dark. Between the French and Americans, there were close to three hundred stagehands, models, and assistants passing through. Donna Karan was backstage, too, six months pregnant and so overwhelmed by the stress of overseeing Anne Klein’s models that she started having what she described as “pre-labor contractions.” In particular, she had to get Billie Blair out of one garment and into the next. Pronto. “She walked off with one arm still onstage and I was dressing the other arm,” Karan says.

“Literally half of me was being undressed and half was dressed,” Blair says. “Things moved so quickly; when you finished a passage, right offstage they’re standing there with the next garment.”

It only worked because the clothes were simple. Unlike the French styles, with elaborate hooks and eyes that practically required a lady-in-waiting to fasten, the American clothes were designed for a quick-moving, independent woman. This was fashion’s future in the wings of the Théâtre Gabriel: a woman getting dressed fast and furiously.

Klein got the American segment off to a rousing start. It wasn’t the clothes that made everyone snap to attention. Klein didn’t design showstoppers. Grace Mirabella, then the editor of Vogue, attended the show and described them as “Any Woman’s” kind of clothes. People didn’t remember or take note of the look of the garments, but they couldn’t forget their attitude—and that of the models. They were snappy.

Burrows was up next. The French, with their couture models, had shown beautiful clothes worn by restrained women. Burrows was about to set those women free.

He and Charles Tracy had choreographed the entire segment in a matter of minutes. Each model walked out individually wearing one of Burrows’s wildly colorful, body-conscious matte jersey gowns. There were halter gowns that hung from the neck by little more than a thread. Others were pieced together from a rainbow of colored jersey so that they exploded like fireworks on the models’ bodies. The rippling lettuce hems gave the garments a sensual energy. With each successive woman, the train on the gown grew longer, until the penultimate gown appeared: Bethann Hardison’s canary-yellow Paris homage with the endless train.

Burrows had managed to get all of his favorite mannequins for the show; the group was predominantly African American but not entirely. The music cued up: Al Green’s now classic “Love and Happiness.” Burrows eschewed disco music in favor of soul, with its irresistible rhythms, deeply felt groove, and sensuality.

Whenever Burrows had a fashion show, he loved to egg the models on, telling them to have fun and to cut loose. He did not alter that philosophy for the formality of Versailles. In fact, he encouraged them to really have fun.

Oozing attitude and confidence, Alva Chinn strutted out in a four-tiered toga of rippling jersey. She’d come from conservative Boston to New York in search of freedom and adventure. That path had brought her to France, and there she was on the stage at Versailles, in front of an audience of swells. Strutting into the spotlight with her head thrown back, she had arrived at a place she had never imagined.

Amina Warsuma didn’t feel nervous. She had worked in Europe before and she loved it. It felt like home. She always felt under scrutiny in the United States; she felt pressure to reach a version of perfection that she could never quite achieve. In France, she felt like she could be herself. She let the music guide her.

Norma Jean Darden, the Sarah Lawrence graduate, was swaddled in a long, color-blocked coat. She was pleased with herself and it showed. Karen Bjornson had been trying to figure out how best to show off her bubble-gum-pink dress with its multiple slinky tiers, each finished in a lettuce hem. She’d been watching Pat Cleveland’s whirling charisma. The vitality was contagious. Bjornson, who was typically more reserved on the runway, was invigorated. The shy girl from the Midwest began to stride to the beat of the music.

The Americans were on a tear. They were in harmony with Al Green and dancing across the stage. They were controlling the clothes, bending them to their will. There was no way the clothes could be stiff or static, not as these limber young bodies put them to work.

In hindsight, the kind of extravagant movement that occurred on the Versailles stage was a caffeinated version of what was happening on the New York runways of young designers like Clovis Ruffin. It was akin to the sort of posing and posturing that was the hallmark of the Ebony Fashion Fair road show and continues unabashed at amateur fashion shows in the basements of black churches, at sororities on college campuses, and elsewhere. It represents a delight in the clothes, in the woman, and in the sheer pleasure of touting one’s own glory.

In 1973, Burrows represented a moment when fashion was connecting to women in ways that were both emotional and practical. In one of Burrows’s dresses, a woman’s body was free. And she was on her own, for better or worse.

Each model had her moment on the runway, her chance to make herself known. At the end of her walk, she returned to the back of the stage and waited. One of the last models out was Bethann Hardison. She stalked out wearing that long, yellow woven dress—Burrows’s homage to Paris couture that he had worked on for so long. “Here comes Bethann walking like a gangster!” Tracy says. “We all backed away!”

Hardison came out onstage, her androgynous figure rocking from side to side in a proud swagger. She arrived downstage and fixed the audience with a death stare. And then she swiveled, the train swirling out behind her, and walked away.

As the segment unfolded, Pat Cleveland was revving up backstage. She would be the last model to make an entrance in Burrows’s segment. Her dress, with its angled, color-blocked bodice, had a long, full train, and she began spinning before she even stepped out from the wings. When she emerged into the light, she was spinning like a top. She kept going, faster and faster, with the fabric of her dress fanning out around her tiny frame. As she got closer to the edge of the stage, the entire audience held its breath. She was twirling so fast it seemed as though she might spin right off the stage. She came to the very edge.

Then, as Burrows and Tracy had planned, all the models who had been posing at the back of the stage moved toward the front one last time en masse. They were an army of Technicolor creatures dripping in bold colors, swaddled in feathers, and styled like exotic birds. When they were as close to the audience as they could get without walking clear off the stage, they froze. And they posed.

“It was the beginning of voguing. They went crazy giving attitude,” Tracy says.31

The audience shouted its approval, and programs flew into the air like confetti.

“He made such an impact. It was, ‘Wow!’ There was none of that old regime,” Nemy says. “He was the breakout star [because of] everything about it: the models, the clothes. They were clothes that I liked a lot and wanted to wear.”32

If the American designers were an Olympic relay team, Burrows had just given them a tremendous lead before passing the baton to Blass.

For his Great Gatsby–meets–Deauville collection, Blass relied on Cole Porter and re-created the glittering sophistication of the café society upon which he had built his business. His dresses fell to midcalf and had a retro glamour. They were not skin-baring and sexy. They were glamorous and aloof. His models wore little sculptural hats with elegant netting that shielded their eyes. Even his daytime suiting had a sheen of untouchable glamour, thanks to tailored wool jackets topping slim skirts dripping in sequins.

Tom Fallon’s only job—at least the only one that mattered—was getting Blair onstage. As he searched through the freeway of traffic that was calmly whirring backstage, he was frantic. “Where the fuck is Billie Blair?” Fallon called out to no one and everyone. Then he suddenly saw a flash of sequins and found her standing exactly in place. Everything was moving so quickly, she didn’t even have time to reassure him as she raced to make her cue.

Blair re-created her star turn in Philadelphia with the marcel waves and the eerie resemblance to Josephine Baker. “When I put on a Bill Blass—the fur and the fabric and the fit—you couldn’t tell me I wasn’t the most elegant, complete woman. You couldn’t tell me anything else.”33

With the start of Halston’s segment, the Americans moved full throttle into evening wear. The star designer had cast his portion of the show with his favorite models and his famous friends. The choreography that Kay Thompson, along with Joe Eula, had devised was simple but dramatic. The models positioned themselves onstage in pitch darkness. And as the spotlight landed on each woman, she was suddenly animated. She would show the clothes and then freeze. And her part of the stage would return to darkness and the spotlight would illuminate someone else.

Halston’s music was the moody theme from the 1969 Luchino Visconti film The Damned—a film that continues to inspire designers, thanks to its sadomasochistic aesthetic overtones. The clothes were after-hours sexy. Some were elegant, others were nearly scandalous. Shirley Ferro wore a sleeveless gown that swooped seductively in its rear to reveal the curve of her lower back. Heidi Lieberfarb clutched the sides of a satiny, cocoon-shaped cape with a hemline that swept the floor. Nancy North was drenched in a sequined evening gown with a neckline that plummeted to her waist. Karen Bjornson’s voluptuous dress was cut on the bias and benefitted from her theatrical pirouettes. Chris Royer sparkled in a pale green sequined gown. Elsa Peretti and Royer posed together in long gowns with smoke swirling upward, cigarettes tucked into long thin holders.

Alva Chinn’s one-shoulder toga revealed her naked breast, with only a feather boa providing a hint of cover. Marisa Berenson’s sequined gown was literally see-through. China Machado’s gown—a term used loosely here—had no bodice, only a large feather fan set in silver that she held at her chest.

The choreography in Halston’s portion of the show took full advantage of the wide, deep stage, creating a cinematic tableau to rival the best of Hollywood. He was relying on his boldface names to impress his audience. But Halston had made one miscalculation. While Berenson, whose maternal grandmother was the Paris-based designer Elsa Schiaparelli, was a recognizable part of the jet-setting crowd, the others on Halston’s runway mostly were not. Their celebrity was lost on the predominantly French audience.

“They were next to the black girls who knew how to walk,” says a still-gloating Oscar de la Renta. “And they were flat.”34

Still, Halston had done enough to keep the audience entertained, which was no easy feat since it was now almost midnight.

In the finale of the American show, de la Renta had Blair playing the part of a seductive magician. Like the other Americans, de la Renta’s rehearsal time had been modest at best and the attention he received from Thompson was distracted. He had been his own choreographer.

The result was hypnotic. His soundtrack was “Love’s Theme,” an instrumental soul-meets-disco song by Barry White’s Love Unlimited Orchestra released in 1973. The music began with the rat-a-tat-tat tapping on cymbals and swelled into an easy dance rhythm with lush strings and insistent drums. And out walked Blair in a filmy green gown, a kind of glamorous caftan, to play fashion’s mesmerizing magician.

She dramatically pulled a pink scarf out of her palm and five models emerged wearing pink chiffon gowns. She produced a lilac scarf and five models swanned across the stage cloaked in lilac.

Nicole Fischelis, finally able to take a breather from dressing models, peeked out from the wings and got a look at what was unfolding on stage. “The model was moving with so much grace,” Fischelis recalls. “She was different from the French way. There was a ray of light above her and she was just moving her arms above her.”35

The clothes were positively spare compared to de la Renta’s current work, which is far more ornate. At Versailles, his gowns were ethereal. For his finale, the models filed out in a rainbow-colored, serpentine line—Chinn, Cleveland, Warsuma, North, and the rest. “At the end of my show, people are standing and clapping,” de la Renta says. “In Paris, they’d never seen girls walking to music. No one had seen people move in that way.… There was some magic to it.36

Liza Minnelli returned to the stage to wrap everything up. She performed the title song from Cabaret in Halston’s black cocktail dress, which was dripping with bugle beads. Then all the models joined her onstage, gorgeous in black dresses from all the designers, to sing “Au Revoir, Paris,” which Thompson had written for the occasion. “Au revoir, Paris! Au revoir, mes amis!” sings de la Renta, as he remembers how he savored the final moments of the show.37

As the curtain came down, the audience of French elite jumped to their feet. Thunderous applause and wild bravos reverberated off the walls of the massive theater. The Americans were astounded.

“The indelible impression was the stunned reaction of the French. The French came out with the old glory backgrounds and those kinds of clothes. After that, the Americans came out with incredible youth and it was like night and day,” remembers Nemy. “I didn’t watch the show as much as the audience reaction. I’d seen the dress rehearsal. This was a mostly French audience. I couldn’t believe what was happening.

The audience was both vocal and physical, shouting their bravos from the great boxes of the Théâtre Gabriel and beating their hands in applause. “The American team won because of Kay Thompson,” says Pierre Bergé. “It was like a show on Broadway, more or less. The Americans won, not because of the clothes, but because of the choreography.”39

De la Renta also gives credit to the self-assurance and theatricality of the black models, and how their movement inspired the other women on the American stage. “What made our show was the black American models,” de la Renta says. “There is zero question about that.” 40

Jean Fayard, of the French paper Le Figaro, wrote: “I would not be telling the truth if I did not say the Americans show their clothes one hundred times better than we. All their models are stars of the stage, each one more beautiful, more lithe, more pantherlike than the other. They march like soldiers and they turn like dancers. In brief, la mode americaine brought forth ovations from the cream of Paris who gathered at Versailles.” 41

Eleanor Lambert could not have been prouder. All those years of cajoling and campaigning, waiting and plotting, until finally this one magical, triumphant night. She was seventy years old, a long way from the midwestern kid who’d come to New York with $100. She’d transformed Seventh Avenue. And now, on this stage, American designers had conquered Paris.

“It was as if on this cold night, all the windows of Versailles had been blown open,” Lambert cried.42

With her emotions surging, Lambert could only begin to process what had occurred. But she knew what she had seen. The programs flying into the air. The cheers. All for the very essence of American fashion: “So crisp and fresh and to the point. So alive!” Lambert marveled.43

After the show ended, guests rushed backstage with congratulations and kudos. Vicomtesse Jacqueline de Ribes was ready to break protocol and shop on the spot—and she did. Others simply wanted to revel in the startling display of expertise. Josephine Baker, who had changed into a see-through Yves Saint Laurent extravaganza with only black feathers camouflaging her breasts and the necessary parts, came looking for Billie Blair, her sweet doppelganger who had been the star of the American segment. “Where is she?” Baker asked Fallon.

“I knew who she was,” Fallon says. “I went and got Billie. Josephine Baker reached out and touched her face. She said, ‘I came to Paris in 1922. And you came to Paris tonight.’” 44

The French designers were generous with their admiration, in part because it was the performance that had wowed them, not the clothes. The clothes were relatively simple; they were not feats of technical wizardry—not even the yellow dress that had so confounded Burrows. Instead, the magic was the way in which the presentation connected the clothes to contemporary life. The joie de vivre of American fashion had been made plain by the models. The clothes had been shown with personality, movement, and individuality. Givenchy and Saint Laurent were enamored with the way in which Blass and de la Renta had allowed the models—Blair in particular—to bring expressiveness to their work, something that was not part of the French fashion vocabulary. This fashion transformation on the runway was akin to shifting from formal oil on canvas to photography; there was spontaneity, realism, and beautiful imperfection.

Saint Laurent was especially delighted with Stephen Burrows because of the way he bridged the divide between the kinetic energy of contemporary street culture and the atelier. His clothes were alive because of the models. And his models seemed relevant and effervescent because of his clothes. The young man from Newark wasn’t in love with French fashion, but a compliment was a compliment.

“To have Saint Laurent tell you, ‘You make beautiful clothes,’ it was enough for me. It was like the crowning moment of the trip,” Burrows says. “Saint Laurent was the king of fashion at the time.”

The experience, Burrows says, “made me more worldly. It made me more aware of who those other designers were. I didn’t know before. I wasn’t even concerned about it. It gave me confidence in my talent.” 45

After the show, the evening continued with a midnight buffet hosted by the Rothschilds, who covered the bill and even loaned a few of their own staff to help serve it. The multicourse dinner was held in the King’s Apartments, accessed through the Hall of Mirrors, which was lined with footmen.

The Americans were once again wowed by the grandeur. Burrows, who had just celebrated his thirtieth birthday, eschewed his beloved fringe and mirrored polka-dot pants, trading them in for a traditional tuxedo. It was the first time he’d worn a tux since he’d accompanied a neighborhood girl to her high school prom at the New Jersey shore. His new business partners had made it for him.

Donna Karan couldn’t stop staring at the haute cuisine and the formal settings. “The portions were this big,” Karan recalls, making a teeny-tiny circle with her fingers. “There were twelve forks and thirteen spoons! It was very formal.” 46

All the key people who worked on the American show were invited to the dinner, not just the designers—even if some of the invitations had arrived at the last minute. Rodney Pearson, the sound engineer, didn’t get his invitation until the afternoon of the show. He’d frantically run around Paris looking to rent a tuxedo, relying on his rudimentary, schoolboy French. But the last-minute dash had been worth it. “I don’t usually get invited to the king’s quarters!” 47

When the Americans entered the dinner, they were greeted with a standing ovation, cheers, and applause. “I remember floating down in a Stephen Burrows gown with a long train that never ended. It was a rainbow, a butterfly dress. It was just fantastic,” recalls Norma Jean Darden. “The French looked at us like we were creatures from outer space.” 48

The guests were seated at eighty-three tables, each covered in royal blue linens printed with gold fleurs-de-lis in an echo of the theater. The tables were scattered across five rooms within the apartments, which were illuminated only by warm, flickering light from white tapers in gold candelabras. There were endless rows of stemware. Each place setting included a large golden gift box of Revlon fragrances. The guests dined on a cold buffet of assorted pâtés, smoked fish, truffle-infused ham, chilled beef and duck, and desserts that reminded Darden of spun gold. It was all accompanied by a 1965 Château Lafite Rothschild and a 1969 Bollinger champagne. No one complained about the wine.

The guests sat shoulder to shoulder, draped in jewels and wrapped in feathers, a glamorous flock clucking in tight-jawed, purse-lipped Parisian French. Burrows, who didn’t speak French, found his table, which thankfully was filled with American models. But Baron Guy de Rothschild, in choppy English, invited Burrows to his table, which was situated in a separate room and filled with the glamorous swans of the era. Burrows was curious to meet them; but there was no room at the baron’s table for Roz Rubenstein, who was Burrows’s close friend and date for the dinner.

“I was a little upset over having to leave Rozy like that. I just thought it was very rude. Suppose I was married, I couldn’t bring my wife? I thought it was strange,” Burrows says. Still, he went anyway, propelled by excitement and adrenaline. “I met Gloria Guinness and Jacqueline de Ribes and Mrs. Rothschild.” 49

There was no toast that evening, no formal pronouncement of a winner in the runway battle. There was just the insistent chatter of more than eight hundred guests and models against the background noise of unobtrusive music.

“The Americans were in seventh heaven, drunk with joy. They’d had a remarkable exhibition of clothes and creativity,” recalls Enid Nemy. “The French were happy too, not miserable. The Americans knew what they had done.”50

Journalist Pat Shelton, who died in 2013, was writing for the wire service United Press International. She finally left Versailles around 3 a.m., making her way back to Paris and the Hôtel Meurice so she could file a rough draft of her story by 5 a.m. Like so many of her colleagues, Shelton was there to report primarily on the social and cultural aspects of the event. But even in her just-the-facts description of the evening, she acknowledged the American success.

American and European millionaires with checkbooks, furs and jewels sipped champagne until dawn Thursday at the Paris party of the year in an effort to rescue the Versailles Palace from termites and a leaky roof.

The chateau was scarcely heated and women in strapless gowns shivered. One laughed. ‘This gets us used to the oil shortage.’ There was cold food, no telephones, few toilets.

For this one glorious evening the rich and the royal could forget about the oil crisis and the war, inflation and the sick dollar, and enjoy life as did the 17th century kings of France.

The ladies at the bash were a show in themselves. The sable, minks and ermines checked at the cloakroom could have carpeted the chateau ballroom wall to wall.

The French staged a two-hour show, a style parade by Givenchy and other Paris creators and entertainment by top stars from singer Charles Trenet to Russian ballet star Rudolph Nureyev.

After a champagne intermission, Zizi Jeanmaire drew lottery numbers from a basket and somebody won a Cardin gown, another guest a Dior fur. Nobody in this crowd squealed.

Then on came the first American fashion show ever staged in France—35 fast minutes of breezy music and dancing with Liza Minnelli singing “Cabaret” and mannequins showing the creations of U.S. designers Bill Blass, Halston, and others.

The audience called, “bravo.” 51

Nemy, a society and feature writer, was not expected or asked to focus on the clothes. But she couldn’t ignore them in the story she filed: “It was generally acknowledged that the night belonged to ‘les Americains.’ The French show was held first, but from the moment Liza Minnelli strode on stage, belting out ‘Bonjour Paris,’ accompanied by models in a symphony of vanilla to brown tone, the blue and gold theater resounded with bravos and sustained applause.”52

And finally, the great Eugenia Sheppard declared, “It was the robbery of all time.”53

On that one snowy night at Versailles, the Americans shone brightly onstage, some as brilliantly as they ever would. Black models were a triumph, a thunderclap of glory. The tale unfolded in France, but the story is wholly American: a culmination of social shifts, racial conflict, politics, ambition, idealism, and magic.