The Sexiest Runway Shows of All Time
The all-time sexiest runway shows of all time according to fashion industry insiders like Inez Vinoodh, Guido Palau, Olivier Zahm, and more.
After months of buildup, Fifty Shades of Grey finally opens this Thursday, two days shy of Valentine’s and just as New York fashion week gets rolling. In honor of this exciting confluence of events, we’re launching a week’s worth of stimulating content here on Style.com. First up: the all-time sexiest runway shows according to insiders like Inez Vinoodh, Guido Palau, Olivier Zahm, and more. In the end, Fifty Shades avoided the NC-17 rating, but fair warning, this slideshow is NSFW!
Photo: RexUSA1/16Thierry Mugler Spring 1991
Inez van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin, Photographers
"We would select Thierry Mugler s 1991 collection, which served as the starting point for George Michael s hit video Too Funky. Vinoodh and I snuck into the show, thanks to our friend Fritz who worked on airbrushing the rubber garments with Mugler. We had come to Paris to try to see shows together but had not admitted to ourselves that we had fallen in love with each other. The show completely blew our minds in terms of design, spectacle, and image with all the ultra-supermodels so breathtakingly power-sexy. Eva Herzigova in a rubberized lace dress. The motorcycle corset. The sexy robot. They re all by now design classics, and the Too Funky video turned into the ultimate fashion and music video of all time. After the show we went out for a romantic dinner with plenty of champagne and oysters, and the rest is Inez and Vinoodh love story history!"
Photos: Courtesy of Helmut Lang2/16Helmut Lang Spring 1991
James Scully, Casting Director
"In 1991 I was a buyer for Charivari, a high-fashion boutique in New York. The thing I was most looking forward to that season was Helmut Lang s Paris show. I remember distinctly on arriving the whole audience complaining that the room felt overly humid, but then the lights went up, the heat was turned higher, and a watershed moment began. In a complete 180 to the overly sexualized and choreographed shows of the time personified by Mugler, Montana, and Lacroix, the parade at Helmut was like machine-gun fire, one model after the other. Every man and woman with bare, flushed faces and wet hair like they just stepped out of a hot shower, wearing rubberized suits and dresses that changed color with their body heat. See-through dresses and catsuits with beads and feathers were the only thing barely covering the girls naked bodies underneath, the male models were clearly not wearing underwear, and half the cast was in bare feet. If all that wasn t enough, it was also the first appearance of Helena Christensen on a runway—a showstopper in itself. I ll never forget how visibly uncomfortable the audience was watching the parade of overt yet stripped-down beauty—the sexual tension in that room was beyond electric!
"As we left the Trocadero trying to digest what we d seen but too uncomfortable to really discuss it, Woody Hochswender, who was then the fashion critic of The New York Times, wasted no time getting to the point. He turned to a group of us and asked, Is it my imagination or did that show just make the audience horny? It was a true fashion moment, a master class in raw sensuality that I have not witnessed since, and it signaled the arrival of Helmut Lang as one of fashion s masters."
Photo: Getty Images3/16Lanvin Fall 2010
Guido Palau, Hairstylist
"I liked the way it was dark and all the girls were kind of anonymous. They looked like an army of very sexual beings, very powerful. With the smoke, it felt like a Roxy Music album cover, and in my sort of fantasy, it was. Alber [Elbaz] is very organic to work with. He doesn t talk too much about references, he talks about emotion and feeling. We had to run around and find 60 identical wigs that weren t really expensive-looking. I wanted them to feel like a wig that a mistress might go out and buy. Helmut Newton women often had that kind of hair, and they had a strange kind of power to them."
Photo: FirstVIEW.com4/16Alexander McQueen Spring 2004
Sophia Neophitou, Owner and Editor in Chief, 10 Magazine
"McQueen s Deliverance show was inspired by Sydney Pollack s 1969 film They Shoot Horses, Don t They? which re-created the tragic dance marathons of the Great Depression. The audience was arranged in a semicircle of wooden chairs at the Salle Wagram in Paris, and the models danced around the spare set in a relentless, magical circle, moving in waves linked together across the floor. To see them tumbling around and falling from exhaustion was so beautiful and cinematic; it really did transport me to a different place and time, like true theater. This darker strain of romanticism is what I adore—it s less predictably sexy but still so very sensual."
Photo: FirstVIEW.com5/16Alessandro Dell’Acqua Spring 2002
Godfrey Deeny, Editor at Large, Fashion, Le Figaro
"Alessandro is a natty Neapolitan known for his flirty, seductive fashion, a gent not afraid to push the boundaries in terms of sheer fabrics or revealing cuts and silhouettes. I began catching his shows in Milan at the beginning of the century and loved the way he loved women for all their sultry glory. He is a great tailor, precisely because he does not self-edit too much, and in this show he paired all the fantasy with bedroom hair and sensuality. It makes Victoria s Secret look like the dumb pastiche it really has become. This collection from 2002 really conjured up the mood of the times, when women were celebrating their sexual freedom, something we in the West and people worldwide should respect. It brought the house down in a roar of applause and deserved every clap."
