The Battle of Versailles Fashion Show

The Battle of Versailles Fashion Show was a historic fashion show held on November 28, 1973, in the Palace of Versailles to raise money for its restoration.

Created by Eleanor Lambert and Versailles curator Gerald Van der Kemp, the show pitted French designers (Yves Saint Laurent, Pierre Cardin, Emanuel Ungaro, Marc Bohan, and Hubert de Givenchy) against American designers (Oscar de la Renta, Stephen Burrows, Halston, Bill Blass, and Anne Klein, who brought along her assistant, Donna Karan).

With a guest list of 700 and notables such as Princess Grace, Marie-Hélène de Rothschild, Jacqueline de Ribes, Gloria Guinness, Andy Warhol, Liza Minnelli and Joséphine Baker the event became legendary. Each designer was to submit eight designs for consideration. The Parisian designers viewed their competition as mere sportswear designers. The American designers used ten black models, an unprecedented number at the time. The American designers and their models stole the show, providing a youthful approach and stunning the primarily French audience.

In 2011, the Huffington Post Game Changer Awards honored the African American models of Versailles with the Style Award. The models included Pat Cleveland, Bethann Hardison, Billie Blair, Jennifer Brice, Alva Chinn, Norma Jean Darden, Charlene Dash, Barbara Jackson, Ramona Saunders, and Amina Warsuma.

In the 21st century, the event would be portrayed as a fierce competition between the two countries' designers, a "battle," but at the time it was seen as a friendly and harmonious example of collaboration and cooperation in which the US designers surprised attendees. US designers were already seen as leading lights during the casual, sportswear-dominated 1970s, with increasing numbers of French and other designers opening branch offices in New York to be part of the zeitgeist, and the Versailles event seemed an extension of this growing closeness.

In 2012, filmmaker Deborah Riley Draper chronicled the event in the feature documentary, Versailles '73: American Runway Revolution. The film included designer Stephen Burrows, French Chambre Syndicale President Didier Grumbach, and many of the models, journalists, and guests who attended the event in 1973.

In 2016 another documentary "Battle at Versailles" was made by the fashion network M2M, chronicling the event. The film was narrated by Stanley Tucci and featured many of the event's participants.

A fictionalized version of the Battle is depicted in the television miniseries Halston, which premiered May 2021 on Netflix.

On December 7, 2023, Madrid-based board game publisher Salt & Pepper Games launched a crowdfunding campaign for their card-driven tabletop game depicting the event on the Gamefound platform. In "The Battle of Versailles," two players take the role of either the American or French design teams in a fashion battle to contribute the most to the reconstruction of the Palace of Versailles.