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.
Runway shows are movie and TV show perennials—sometimes where you'd least expect to find them, such as the nighttime drama Knots Landing, which ran on the CBS network from 1979 to 1992. A quick backstory for those not as old as me (i.e. ancient) who didn’t watch it the first time around: The producers of Knots Landing were initially going for an American-TV version of Scenes from a Marriage, the intense (to put it mildly) Swedish miniseries by the legendary Ingmar Bergman which chronicled the breakdown of a relationship. The Dallas spin-off they delivered instead was more Douglas Sirk by way of LA’s coastal suburbs—and bloody brilliant it was, too.
Storylines veered from a demented televangelist (aren’t they always?) to a spurned lover who committed suicide and framed her ex for her ‘murder’ to newborns kidnapped from the hospital delivery room, with their poor mother—Joan Van Ark as Valene Ewing—being told they were stillborn. Twenty or so episodes later, the truth was revealed, in a slo-mo season finale reveal. I was hooked—and all I can say is that suburban California was clearly not at all like the suburban Scotland where I grew up.
That’s not to say, though, that Knots Landing wasn’t very well-acted (it was) and very well-written (it was), or that it couldn’t do social commentary (it did), or be sometimes funny (it was that too). Which brings us to the episode which featured a fashion show—‘Reunion’, from 1982. So you’re all caught up on the plot: Our saintly lead character Karen Fairgate (Michelle Lee), the moral compass of the suburban cul de sac where all the action takes place, has an old college friend, Victoria, visiting. Karen has given up her career for family and motherhood, Victoria is in the midst of her career as a hugely successful fashion designer—and thereby the drama ensues, as the never-the-twain-shall-meet narrative of career versus family is explored, in much the same way any Jill Clayburgh movie did back in the day.
Over the course of ‘Reunion’, Victoria—played by Jessica Walter, who brought the same spiky brio she would later summon as Lucille Bluth on Arrested Development some decades later—tells Karen, “Oh, cut the motherhood crap, Karen! It’s a biological function, not a holy calling!” This after Karen has spurned Victoria’s invitation to come work with her. Meanwhile, Diana, Karen’s teen daughter, is (perhaps unsurprisingly) in awe of Victoria—especially when Victoria offers her the chance to travel to France with her on a work trip. “It won’t kill Diana to come to Paris with me for a few weeks and miss some school,” Victoria says—a sentiment that Diana, of course, agrees with but that her mother does not—and hello: Conflict ensues. (Frankly, I’m with Diana on this one: Who wouldn’t want to ditch Knots Landing High for gay Paree?)
It’s at the fashion show—featuring the female leads wearing Victoria’s designs—where some narrative resolution takes place. Valene, Diana, and Abby—the villainess of the show, portrayed by Donna Mills (who, as she was renowned for her eye makeup, once made an instructional video called The Eyes Have It, which I and a certain rather famous designer are just obsessed with)—model early ‘80s evening looks heavy on the rhinestones and feathers; clearly Victoria graduated from the Bob Mackie School of Fashion. “You too can look like a million dollars!” says Victoria, and who are we to question the monetary equivalent of how these glamazon gowns would make you look and feel?
When Diana finally takes to the runway in a pale blue ruffled bustier and ball skirt (v. Lady Diana Spencer in her Bellville Sassoon era), her mom is watching from the wings proudly—realizing, at long last, that her daughter is a young woman with her own agency and life path ahead of her. The runway show as a salve of family strife? Surely a first. And likely a last.