It makes sense that Paris has always been home to la mode because both the city and its couturiers’ creations encourage fantasy and foster romance. A swoon-worthy affair itself, Vogue World: Paris celebrated the affinity between athletics and fashion over a hundred-year span by connecting each decade with a particular sport. The looks included were by French designers and those who present their collections in the City of Light.
This event changed the rules of the game by bringing fashion from the confines of the catwalk into the streets. It was like a temporary exhibition in motion. Helping dot every i and cross every t was fashion curator Alexandre Samson, who shared the team’s mood board and inspirations. (See all the event credits here. Below is an inside look at the making of a once-in-a-lifetime event.
Overture
Aya Nakumara in Jean Paul Gaultier couture
“She represents a very beautiful vision of France,” said the designer, who showed his first collection in Paris in 1976. Read more here.
1920s: Cycling
The modern, streamlined silhouette for active women dates to the ’20s. Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel embodied the push-forward attitude of the post–World War I world. She embraced the then popular garçonne look but also crafted dreamy dresses called dancings. Three 1924 dresses that appeared in Vogue magazine were re-created 100 years later for Vogue World: Paris 2024. Read more here.
Chanel, 1924/2024
Silver and Gold Jazz Age–Inspired Looks
Lanvin, 1924/2024
The house that Jeanne Lanvin founded in 1899 is the oldest in Paris. Though the designer is well-known for romantic, full-skirt robes de style and inspiration trips, she also worked extensively with actors of the time. For Les Soirées de Paris, a cultural event sponsored by Vogue, Madame Lanvin designed costumes for the opening performance, including a star-spangled bathing suit she christened “Vogue” that is now in the collection of the Palais Galliera. Using that piece as a starting point, the house created a flapper-style dress especially for Vogue World: Paris. Read more here.
Adieu, Dries
“We thought it was very meaningful to have this tribute to a contemporary designer obsessed with the ’20s,” Samson says. “We selected a look evoking the era. It will be the last women’s Dries Van Noten look to walk [in Paris].”
French Fiction
Two fictional characters informed the gear worn by cyclists from the French national team. Their mask-like headwear nods to an antihero of crime fiction dreamed up by writers Marcel Allain and Pierre Souvestre, Fantômas. “He’s clearly a thief but a very chic thief,” jokes Samson. The oil black silk bodysuits reference the getup of silent-film actor Musidora (a.k.a. Jeanne Roques), who is especially known for playing the vampish Irma Vep in Les Vampires.
1930s: Track and Field
Cristóbal Balenciaga moved his couture house in 1937, and the following looks by the current creative director, Demna, are re-creations that he oversaw of two looks lost to time. Using photographs, a sketch, and a newspaper clipping, the house resurrected a Velásquez-inspired fringe dress from fall 1939 and a graphic stunner in black and white slipper satin from fall 1940. Read more here.
Balenciaga by Demna
The remake of Balenciaga’s fall 1940 couture dress
The remake of the Balenciaga fall 1939 couture dress
A series of looks in black and white evoke Old Hollywood glamour.
Mad for Madeleine Vionnet
Madeleine Vionnet is credited with mastering the bias-cutting technique that defined, in part, the long, sensuous silhouette of the ’30s. Her kind of glamour was inimitable and based on technique. Maison Margiela’s 2024 couture look nods to Vionnet.
Homage à Dietrich
“In the ’30s Marlene Dietrich was forbidden to enter Paris by the mayor because she wore pants,” Samson says.
Snazzy Schiaparelli
The house of Schiaparelli moved to the Place Vendôme in 1935. The Italian-born designer was noted for her penchant for waist-up dressing and her witty collaborations with the Surrealists. A skeleton dress made with Salvador Dalí in 1938 has been reinterpreted by the current creative director, Daniel Roseberry. Read more about Schiaparelli.
FKA twigs Causes a Flap in Alexandre Vauthier
“Wearing head-to-toe Alexandre Vauthier, she brought a modern-day flapper energy to the Les Années Folles section of the evening, posing and vamping around the Colonne Vendôme in the maison’s vertiginous platforms,” wrote Hayley Maitland. Read more here.
Maluma Out-Gatsbys Gatsby in Thom Browne
The Mad Dash: Course de Garçons de Café
“I was wondering how we could connect track and field with fashion and Paris,” Samson says, “and I remember that in every city in France since the beginning of the 20th century, there is a run, Course des Cafés. Each café brings one waiter with a tray, some glasses, water, and wine, and the waiters compete by speed walking in the streets. It was just relaunched in Paris two months ago.”
1940s: Aquatics
This section of the show was “very South of France inspired,” said Samson. The stripes “are emblematic of the French beach houses, and it is also the 10-year anniversary of a collection from Jacquemus called Les Parasols de Marseille. These parasols always have big stripes, so we asked him if we could give this a modern take [and consider] the influence with the bikini.”
“Right after the war in 1946, just before the New Look, people really struggled, of course, but wanted some lightness,” says Samson. “The bikini was designed in 1946 by two designers, Jacques Heim and Louis Réard.” Synchronized swimming and Esther Williams’s movies were also touchstones.
1950s: Equestrianism
“The suit entered female wardrobes through equestrian sports,” Samson says. “The Amazon [horsewomen] could wear tailoring taken from menswear at the beginning of the 19th century. Christian Dior was obsessed with the Belle Époque, so I thought maybe there is a connection here between the suit—which is basically the epitome of ’50s fashion, starting in 1947—and the equestrian [look].”
Dior’s New Look Defined Postwar Style
Beautiful Balmain
Christian Dior and Pierre Balmain worked side by side at Lucien Lelong before the latter opened his own maison in 1945. He was known for the sophisticated jolie madame look. Gertrude Stein was a friend of Balmain’s who not only attended his debut show with her dog Basket in tow but wrote about it for Vogue. Read Stein’s essay here.
Kendall Jenner and Gigi Hadid Ride High in Hermès—and So Do Django and Napo
1960s: Fencing
The ’60s was a happening decade. Fashionwise, the team decided to focus on Space Age fashion popularized mainly by three designers: Pierre Cardin, Paco Rabanne, and André Courrèges. They all trained with Cristóbal Balenciaga, one of the first couturiers to have models dance at his shows.
Out-of-This-World Space Age Fashion
Silver and White
“Fencing—it’s Courrèges, it’s Paco Rabanne, but to me fencing is sometimes evoking the astronauts in their suits,” Samson says.
1970: Gymnastics
The ’70s section is a nod to the Battle of Versailles, according to Samson. “Givenchy opens [this section] because it is one of the last standing houses that showed at Versailles. Givenchy was not interested in being compared to American designers, so we thought it would be fun to propose revenge. [The looks are] basically gymnastic suits with big capes inspired by Pat Cleveland and the amazing energy of models. We have only Black models because in the ’70s Grace Jones arrived in Paris and all these amazing Black models worked for the couture.”
Studio 54 and Le Palace discotheques were also references.
The reference for the gymnasts, explains Samson, is Nadia Comăneci, from the white bodysuit to the beribboned hair.
1980s: Martial Arts
“Yves Saint Laurent started in the ’50s and ’60s, but then we looked at the power suits, which are very Helmut Newton ’80s,” Samson says. “These huge shoulders [seem connected to martial arts] because they are made to impress. [There’s] also a link to the arrival of the Japanese designers in Paris.”
1990s: Football
Samson considers 1989 to be “the beginning of the 1990s.” It was the year the Berlin Wall fell and Azzedine Alaïa designed a tricolor dress worn by Jessye Norman on the 200th anniversary of the French Revolution. “We asked Pieter Mulier to create an interpretation of that dress to open the decade of football, which is clearly French-flag obsessed because in 1989 France won the World Cup. Culturally it was very important because football is the most beloved sport of France.”
2000s: Tennis
“Tennis is linked with the 2000s because of the rise of these amazing female stars of tennis and, of course, the Williams sisters,” Samson says. “It was also very fun to have Louis Vuitton. And so we selected 10 looks in tribute to the 10-year anniversary of Nicolas Ghesquière there.”
2010s: Breakdancing
A mix of art and sport that started on the street has become a respected discipline. The digital era is represented by metallics. Dancers wear looks from Louis Vuitton, Loewe, and Off-White.
