This year’s Forces of Fashion, taking place on October 16, is dedicated to the art, drama, and influence of the runway throughout history. In honor of that, Vogue editors are sharing their favorite fictional fashion shows that have appeared in movies and television shows throughout the years.
While it was the Raf Simons fall 2014 couture show for Christian Dior that made me want to work in fashion, the original Gossip Girl series also played a starring role in embedding that dream into my young brain. Fashion has always played a key role in the series, thanks to the characters of Blair Waldorf and Serena van der Woodsen, who both had a killer sense of style. But it was Waldorf’s character, the nepo baby of famous designer Eleanor Waldorf, who really stole the show.
I first started watching Gossip Girl in middle school. I had finally gotten my own computer and Netflix account, which meant I was chronically on Tumblr. At the time, the Beckham children were rising in popularity online thanks to their dashing good looks, Harper’s unintentionally funny memes, and their fashionable fits when sitting front row at their mother Victoria Beckham’s shows. Blair was like a fictional version of one of the Beckham children, if they had been old enough to play a role in helping their mother out behind the scenes before her twice-a-year collections. In one episode, Eleanor, who realized that her daughter was far more talented than the “drugged out” publicists who normally arranged the guest list, entrusted Blair with one of the show’s most important tasks—the seating chart. Because of her keen social senses—and the leadership skills she had gained from running her high school—Blair knew that the perfect seating chart meant splitting up exes with an entire Vanity Fair editorial team between them and sitting her “minions” in the second row, because the only people who deserved to sit FROW were celebrities, editors, and socialites. (Note: This was before the days of social media and influencers.)
But things go awry when Eleanor’s team realizes that the FROW is devoid of young It girls that would help make Eleanor’s show buzzier than Marc Jacobs, whom they were up against on the NYFW calendar. To solve the crisis, they enlist the help of Blair’s best friend, Serena van der Woodsen, to convince her and her new socialite friends to skip the Marc Jacobs show and sit front row at Eleanor Waldorf’s instead—all of this unbeknownst to Blair. Between her perfect seating chart being tampered with and her best friend replacing her with socialites, it sets Blair off into a spiral of revenge.
And no show ever runs smoothly—except for maybe Marc Jacobs, who now starts exactly on time. Eleanor Waldorf faces the biggest disaster any designer ever could: She has no models. It seems that her daughter’s scheming has resulted in her full cast “getting lost.” With hundreds of the latest season pieces on racks but no girls to wear them, Eleanor finds herself at a crossroads: How will the show go on? Then, a stroke of genius: Sitting in her front row are Serena van der Woodsen and her posse of tall and sample-size socialites to save the day. Serena then gets to live out every girl’s fantasy. She not only walks but closes the show in a green strapless dress that has all of the editors, including André Leon Talley, talking about how much they loved it. The show is a smashing success, with Eleanor beating Marc Jacobs to become the show of the night (this, let’s not forget, is a work of fiction). A happy ending for everyone—except for Blair, whose ego has been bruised by her closest friends and family.
While we all at one point in our lives have fantasized about being a show pony like Serena, most of us are work horses like Blair. Unlike other fictional television shows that never actually showcased the “hard times” of working in fashion, the original Gossip Girl dedicated an entire 40 minutes to the ups, the downs, and everything in between—everything that happens in just one show. Now imagine reliving that episode over and over again for the entirety of a month. Can you understand why we’re all so tired and cranky after Paris Fashion Week ends?
