At first glance, Lila Moss doesn’t have all that much in common with Eliza Doolittle, an Edwardian flower girl who yearned for a life with warm feet and warm hands. But this evening, at Vogue World: London, the model paid homage to the East End underdog-turned-romantic heroine, dressed in a remake of Julie Andrews’ original costume for the 1958 debut of My Fair Lady.
During the spectacle’s fifth act, Moss was joined by a pantheon of fashion’s most influential models, in an entirely monochromatic reenactment of one of the musical’s most famous scenes. The production, which ran for 2,281 performances at Theatre Royal Drury Lane, is broadly credited with transforming the reputation of musicals in the UK. No longer was the genre considered all-singing, all-dancing guff beloved by American philistines, but something of emotional and intellectual merit.
Central to its positive reception were the elaborate costumes designed by photographer Cecil Beaton. Himself an era-defining contributor to Vogue, Beaton made 150 costumes for the inaugural Broadway production, and an additional 20 when it decamped to the West End. The work of tailor Alina Gencaite of Galedi London, Moss’s costume reimagined the outfits Beaton designed for the musical’s now-iconic Ascot montage, which was itself a tribute to the Black Ascot of 1910, held in the wake of Edward VII’s death. On stage, the end result looked like “a motionless frieze of ladies like magpies against a white drop”, as Beaton put it.
See every look from the Vogue World 2023 red carpet in London here.
