"Invitation Strictly Personal": A History Of Fashion Week Invitations
This article is dedicated to the loving memory of Samuelle Daves, amazing fashion editor, great friend, brilliant mentor and “fashion show partner”. You are still loved and missed every day by all of us who were lucky enough to know you.
Milan Fashion Week started a few days ago, and one of the main topics regarding the event is related to invitations, whether they be invitations to fashion shows, exhibition space openings or parties organized by brands.
I recently read “Invitation Strictly Personal: 40 Years Of Fashion Show Invites” by Ian R. Webb, a wonderful fashion volume that encompasses a large number of fashion show invitations made over the years, with a focus on the aspect of graphic design and themes related to these shows, which are summarized in a series of paragraphs. I had bought the book after seeing it recommended on The Fashion Roadman channel.
“Invitation Strictly Personal” was a very interesting read because it allowed me to take a close look at many invitations that have been sent in the past decades, and some of them are true artistic masterpieces. I myself have been able to collect a number of fashion show invitations over the past two decades because, as some of the readers of Studio Libraries may already know, my family and I have always worked in the fashion industry. Fashion is something I grew up with, during my childhood and teenage years in Milan, a city that has always been considered one of the world’s leading fashion capitals. I started collecting invitations to fashion shows from the time I was about thirteen years old, when I started going to the presentation of some collections (of course, some of the invitations at the time were provided to me by members of my family’s working team, with whom I had the pleasure of attending some fashion shows, being only a young girl at the time), while also gathering press kits reserved for guests and catwalk invitations made on glossy paper. My collection of invitations and press kits is pretty extensive, and many of these items were included in the picture at the top of this article.
“Invitation Strictly Personal: 40 Years of Fashion Show Invites” can almost be considered a coffee table book because it is a curated volume that is also great to display and flip through from time to time, as well as to read more thoroughly. Many of the invitations have never been unveiled before in previous publications and appear for the first time in Ian R. Webb’s volume, with a foreword by fashion designer Anna Sui, who says of the book: “Invitation Strictly Personal is a glorious archive of a particularly ingenious creative niche that may have never been properly documented before. These are the things the general public never sees. It’s certainly an inspirational resource for fans of fashion, but also to anyone interested in design, graphics and pop culture history.” The volume collects about 300 invitations to womenswear and menswear fashion shows from the past four decades, covering haute couture collections, ready-to-wear and even award ceremonies and presentations of collections by students from prestigious fashion schools such as Central Saint Martins in London. In addition, there are several posters, lookbooks and pictures of fashion show gadgets; not infrequently the press pack includes different kinds of promotional items. I can perfectly recall my happiness as a thirteen-year-old girl when I saw that Love Sex Money by Lorella Signorino (a ready-to-wear brand made in Italy that was quite popular in the late 2000s) included a cat-face keychain made with rhinestones in their press kit. I have photographed it along with some of my invitations and you will probably spot it easily in the opening picture of the article. Much of the material in “Invitation Strictly Personal” comes from the author’s personal collection, since he has been a fashion correspondent from the runways for years. Ian R. Webb writes in depth about each runway invitation and promotional image, recounting anecdotes about the background of the designer, the making of a collection, and the looks of the models; these details will certainly be of interest to fashion students, people who work in the fashion industry, and also to anyone who is passionate about this world.
In the past, fashion shows seemed to be part of a universe entirely of their own, and the fashion industry was characterized by a sort of exclusivity; this has changed considerably with the advent of the technological age. Fashion shows are now streamed so that the whole world can watch them remotely, pictures of the various catwalk looks begin to circulate on the internet almost in real time, especially on social media and websites like Vogue Runway. Some fashion designers have even decided to open their shows to the public (as Diesel decided to do for this edition of MFW), and the fashion world often mixes with other fields such as film and sports. This is all quite different from how fashion used to be conceived in the past; in the 18th century, clothes were presented directly to clients, and the role of the press did not yet exist.
From the late 19th century, fashion houses began creating biannual collections and inviting clients to see their creations worn by models. A proper “fashion calendar” was not created until the beginning of the 20th century.
Nowadays ready-to-wear shows are presented six months in advance (Spring/Summer collections in the preceding September/October, while Fall/Winter collections are presented between February and March) and haute couture collections are presented seasonally (Spring/Summer in January and Fall/Winter in July). Menswear collections are also introduced six months in advance. This is the main structure of today’s fashion calendar, with collections being showcased in the world’s four major fashion capitals: New York, London, Milan, and Paris.
It is difficult to pinpoint when the first catwalk show in the history of fashion was staged; Charles Frederick Worth was the first couturier to use models to show his designs in the 1840s, while English designer Lucile is remembered as the inventor of the fashion show in London in 1900. Buyers and private clients were never invited to the same show, and the major fashion houses gave their shows a sense of exclusivity with entrance by invitation only.
The press began to play an important role in promoting fashion collections during the 1920s; in those days invitations were still limited and guests were offered champagne along with some small gifts, such as perfumes. The promotional package provided by the fashion designer became more and more important as the decades went by, and to this day it includes special items such as make-up, soundtracks of the show, and graphic works referencing the theme of the show. Invitations have become increasingly creative and provide the designer with multiple opportunities to reflect the essence of their brand; as Ian R. Webb wrote in “Invitation Strictly Personal”:
“What is the purpose of the invitation itself? For some designers it is purely functional, used to inform guests of the venue and time of the show. For others it can offer clues to the mood of the collection with a single evocative photograph. […] Invitations can add mystery to a forthcoming presentation or share inspiration, offer a backstory or act as a backdrop. An invitation often drip-feeds imagery that puts the clothes on the catwalk into a greater context.”
The invitations depicted in the volume are all quite outstanding and some of them I really loved because I found them to be an incredible expression of creativity, both for their graphic design and for the meanings they expressed. The invitation to Alexander McQueen’s Fall/Winter 2005-06 runway show in Paris was a redesign of the poster for Hitchcock’s film “Vertigo”, and the show was titled “The Man Who Knew Too Much” because McQueen was a great admirer of Hitchcock’s dark sensibility and storytelling related to his cinematic works. The invitation to the 1971 Quorum Collection show in London, featuring prominent fashion designers Ossie Clark and Celia Birtwell, was shaped as a chocolate box and hinted at indulgence, with fashion seen as pure pleasure. It definitely looked rather elegant and intriguing at the same time!
Another great invitation was the one made for the Yves Saint Laurent retrospective show in 2002, which was meant to celebrate the French couture house. The show featured some of the designer’s most iconic sartorial hits, with looks inspired by Matisse, Picasso, and Cocteau among others, as well as some looks that referenced his love of travel. The invitation also included the jeweled heart that always appeared in his haute couture shows.
The invitation for Rochas Fall / Winter 1997-98 fully represented the designer’s love of old-school Hollywood glamour, with a beautiful sketch of a sumptuous gown with red detailing made by Peter O’ Brien, the brand’s designer. It also included a series of quotes from notable personalities such as Oscar Wilde and Dorothy Parker.
One of the invitations I loved the most was undoubtedly the one from Jean Paul Gaultier’s Spring/Summer 1991 show because of the excellent graphic design; it was a pop-up card featuring Adam and Eve in a sort of Garden of Eden, which was an inspiration to the show, as well as the 1980 film Blue Lagoon.
All of the invitations featured in “Invitation Strictly Personal” perfectly show how often fashion mixes with art and they are also very functional in order to show what the designers wish to convey. It is wonderful how the invitations contribute to everything that makes a fashion show something both theatrical and artistic, and I recommend reading this fashion volume to all fashion enthusiasts, as well as those interested in graphic design and artistic expressions of different kinds.