IN the annals of fashion smackdowns, few events have attained anything resembling the legendary status of the 1973 Grand Divertissement à Versailles. A stunt benefit ginned up by Eleanor Lambert, the publicist who invented the Best Dressed List, this fabled fashion show, promoted as a Franco-American collaboration, was always destined to be seen as a battle for dominance: the Old World slugging it out with the New, a muscular group of comers with Studio 54 as their shared point of reference taking on the fusty world of the haute couture.

 

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