Whether it was Jean Patou, Coco Chanel or Christian Dior: Even then, not only did a good collection count, the fashion show also had to be a memorable event.
It started with the salon presentations by the English couturier Charles Frederick Worth – then came the fashion shows.Imago
Fashion shows are now global events that cause a sensation on social media channels. As in the fashion weeks in London, Milan and Paris that have just ended, luxury brands are coming up with ever more spectacular things to attract the attention of journalists, fashion lovers and ultimately, above all, buyers.
Whether Diesel uses the world’s largest sculpture as a backdrop, Gucci organizes a fashion show with twins, or Balenciaga has a muddy battlefield set up as a location: the infinitely expensive events let the actual collections take a back seat. There are also crowds of celebrities, especially from the art or music scene, who are either involved as guests or participants. Cher at Balmain, Kanye West at Balenciaga, artist Gaetano Pesce at Bottega Veneta. The good old supermodels like Kate Moss, Linda Evangelista or Naomi Campbell are also regularly sent down the runway to guarantee attention.
For the cruise collections, which will be shown in May, the fashion hype has been traveling around the world for several years. Stars and influencers are then flown in from all over the world to make the intermediate collections even more attractive. But the billion-dollar luxury industry is actually not about these events, but about clothes, collections, accessories, perfumes and hundreds of products from lighters to key rings, which are supposed to arouse desire at stately prices.
Anyone who thinks that this is all new and a phenomenon of our globalized world with its endless greed for social media content is mistaken. Although the Internet has given this development immense impetus, people were also interested in fashion in analogue times. Even then, it had a high profile in the media. Of course, before the borders and markets of Russia or Asia were opened, luxury fashion was more elitist and reserved for only a few people, but even then consumers were courted with all means possible, and the protagonists of the industry always corresponded to the prevailing zeitgeist.
First was the salon
The English couturier Charles Frederick Worth, who opened his couture salon in Paris on the Rue de la Paix in the middle of the 19th century, invented the demonstration of fashion on living models. In the afternoons he invited nobles and the new industrialized rich to show them the collections. The customers could then order the selected models directly. This ritual persisted in haute couture for many decades and even became a condition for running a couture house in Paris. Paul Poiret continued to develop the salon show, sending his dresses and models on tour each season to sell his collections across Europe and North America. And then things picked up speed: Jean Patou hired the “Dolly Sisters” dancers, who had become megastars in the 1920s, to make his sporty, contemporary fashion palatable to society.
Coco Chanel used celebrities of the time, such as Hollywood star Gloria Swanson and all the grand duchesses who had emigrated from Russia, as well as the high nobility of England to show her collections. Practically, the demonstrators became the best customers. Although on a more modest scale, the means were the same as today. The myth of a designer was always strongly linked to the house’s star models or celebrities, who were appropriated as muses. No fashion show at Givenchy without Audrey Hepburn, while at Dior there were Marlene Dietrich, the Duchess of Windsor or Grace Kelly. Yves Saint Laurent and Karl Lagerfeld focused on the youth culture of the 1960s, so Sylvie Vartan, Catherine Deneuve and Brigitte Bardot became image avatars for their brands.
Then came Paris Fashion Week
The turning point towards the first major spectacles was the establishment of the fashion weeks at the end of the 1970s, where the prêt-à-porter collections were shown centrally in the Louvre in Paris. Later, a fashion week also began to be held in Milan, which is how the Italians gained their international reputation. With the increasing prosperity of Western countries, fashion increasingly became the focus of general interest and of international magazines and magazines.
Globalization finally began with the opening of the Eastern and Asian markets, and in the early 1990s supermodels became the focus of the shows. There was no show that didn’t send the army of Linda Evangelista, Claudia Schiffer, Cindy Crawford, Yasmeen Ghauri, Naomi Campbell and Helena Christensen down the runway. A little later, Nadja Auermann, Tatjana Patitz and Kristen McMenamy joined them. The models became so prominent that everything they showed sold like hotcakes. And the political statement in fashion, as we are currently experiencing with Balenciaga? Also has a tradition: Valentino’s peace dresses for the Gulf War, Katharine Hamnett’s T-shirts against Pershing 2 missiles, Vivienne Westwood’s anti-fracking statements. In fashion, social criticism has been a means of expression since the 1960s to reflect current developments. Fashion shows offer an ideal stage for this.