Vogue: Inventing the Runway

We enter to a room set up like the backstage area of a fashion show. A row of light-up mirrors, and dressing tables littered with makeup, lines the wall. Strips of tape map the floor marking the standing spots for the models: Naomie, Kate, Cindy. ‘Models, be yourself!’ a hand drawn poster tells us before we enter the Lightroom’s main space, a massive box in that has projections on all four walls and the floor. It’s a fun touch, but this is all the physical stuff you get to see at Vogue: Inventing the Runway. 

A collaboration between Vogue magazine itself and the Lightroom, the ‘exhibition’ is essentially a 50-minute documentary film, which covers a lot of ground, taking us on a whistlestop tour of fashion’s greatest hits. It’s not entirely clear whether the film is meant to be a history of the clothes, the designers, the runway, or of Vogue and fashion reporting. The non-chronological piece, split into chapters under themes like ‘The Audience’ and ‘Disruptors’, plays on a loop – it’s designed so you can walk in at any moment and the film will still make sense. Covering the first couture house in the 1850s (Charles Frederick Worth), going all the way up to Pharell Williams’s first Louis Vuitton collection in 2023, and Maison Margiela’s Spring Summer ‘24 glazed doughnut models, it makes a lot of ground. All of this is atmospherically narrated by Cate Blanchett’s soft drawl.  

If you want to look at massive images beautiful clothing, alongside cinematic music, this is a fun experience.

Dior, Quant, Halston, Lagerfeld, Abloh, Galliano, McQueen, Westwood, in just under an hour the projection documents a vast number of history’s biggest designers. Some clips, like Alexander McQueen’s spray painted dress, and Karl Lagerfeld’s Fendi show on the Great Wall of China, really are beautiful and inspiring. And the recreated Louis Vuitton Truman Show-inspired runway set works perfectly in the space, which even has the staircases to match. In perhaps the show’s pivotal moment, a giant Chanel rocketship takes off in the Grand Palais. In the Lightroom, the ground rumbles, and virtual grey smoke billows around us. It’s camp, dramatic and actually pretty exciting. Plus, it’s all very seductive. The line from The Devil Wears Prada: ‘Don’t be ridiculous, Andrea. Everybody wants this,’ comes to mind when we see clips of Tom Ford’s ultra exclusive 2011 fashion show, where Beyoncé and Julianne Moore walked the runway.

But I’ll be honest, the section about the evolution of fashion reporting was quite naff. It felt patronising to be told about the wonders of the internet and social media, and how they had changed how we view and document fashion shows forever. Duh! However, it was a treat to see unbelievably glamorous clips of Thierry Mugler’s iconic 1995 televised fashion show. 

If I was being cynical, I would call Lightroom a glorified cinema that can’t use bells, whistles and sheer scale to style out the fact that it still requires a film of substance. But, if you want to look at massive images and videos of beautiful clothing, alongside cinematic music and dramatic narration, this is a fun experience. Just bear in mind that you will have to spend £25 to do it.