The History of Fashion: From Bone Needles to Superintelligence Runways

Top image: a Justin Zachary gown on the runway at The Bureau Fashion Week LA, West Hollywood, October 2026. Photo: Anthony Perlas, Nightlife Report.

Who gets to wear what. Who decides. Who pays. Who gets paid. Fashion has asked those four questions for two thousand years. The answers keep changing. The questions never do. This is the short, sourced history of how we got from a needle to a runway with a camera at the end of it, and to a 2026 law that treats a model’s digital copy as something she has to sign for.

How this article was built: every fact below links to a numbered source at the bottom. Where a quote reached us second-hand, we say “as quoted by.” Company figures are labeled as company figures. Anything we could not verify was left out.

The timeline at a glance

Year	What happened
1st century BC	Julius Caesar restricts who may wear certain robes and pearls, and on which days ^[1]
1858	Charles Frederick Worth and Otto Bobergh open a couture house at 7 rue de la Paix, Paris ^[2]
1910	Gabrielle Chanel opens Chanel Modes at 21 rue Cambon ^[3]
1921	Chanel No. 5 ^[3]
1946	Eileen and Jerry Ford found Ford Models in their New York home ^[4]
Feb 12, 1947	Christian Dior shows his first collection; the “New Look” ^{[5, 6]}
1967	Wilhelmina Cooper founds Wilhelmina Models ^[7]
1972	Elite opens in Paris (New York, 1977) ^[8]
Aug 1, 1995	The first Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show, at the Plaza Hotel ^[9]
Jun 19, 2025	New York’s Fashion Workers Act takes effect ^[10]
Oct 18, 2026	The Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show goes live from Los Angeles ^[11]

Chapter 1. In the beginning, the needle

Our runway-construction piece, From Bone Needle to LED Wall, starts where the long documentaries start: with a needle carved from bone. The point it makes still holds. Sewing, not decoration, was the first fashion technology. Every look on a 2026 runway is still a flat material cut and sewn into a shape a body can wear.

What changed over the next few thousand years was not the needle. It was who controlled the clothes, and the money around them.

Chapter 2. Dressed for power: Rome

At his aunt Julia’s funeral, Julius Caesar told the crowd that his family, the Julii, descended from Venus ^[1]. Later, as dictator, he decided who could wear what. His biographer Suetonius writes: “He denied the use of litters and the wearing of scarlet robes or pearls to all except those of a designated position and age, and on set days.” ^[1]

Caesar also dressed to be noticed. Suetonius calls him “remarkable in his dress”: a senator’s tunic with fringed sleeves to the wrist and a loose belt. The dictator Sulla is said to have warned the nobles “to keep an eye on the ill-girt boy.” ^[1] Two thousand years before street-style photography, a young man’s sleeves were read as a political signal.

The lesson: clothing tells a crowd who holds power. Rules about clothing tell you who wants to keep it.

Chapter 3. Worth and the first live model

Charles Frederick Worth was born on October 13, 1825, in Bourne, Lincolnshire, and apprenticed at Swan & Edgar, a London draper. In 1846 he moved to Paris, by the usual account with about five pounds, and went to work at Gagelin, a silk firm. There he met Marie Vernet. They married in 1851. ^[2]

In 1858, with partner Otto Bobergh, he opened his own house at 7 rue de la Paix ^[2]. Four things made him different:

The client came to him. He designed collections in advance and clients chose from them ^[2].
He signed the clothes. Worth sewed labels into his work. The Museum of the City of New York has said that before Worth, the idea of a dress being recognizably the work of its creator did not exist (as quoted by Wikipedia) ^[2].
He used a live woman, not a doll. His early model was Marie. Lucy Bannerman of The Times later called her the world’s first professional model (as quoted by Wikipedia) ^[2].
He ran it like a business. By the late 1880s the house showed seasonal collections; at its height it employed about 1,200 people, and a single bodice could use 17 pieces of fabric ^[2].

His break came in 1860, with a gown for Princess Pauline de Metternich that the Empress Eugénie admired. The princess later wrote: “And so… Worth was made and I was lost, for from that moment there were no more dresses at 300 francs each” (as quoted by Wikipedia, citing The Times) ^[2]. For the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869, the empress reportedly ordered 250 Worth dresses ^[2]. Worth also narrowed the crinoline toward the “princess line” and made an ankle-length walking skirt ^[2]. He died in Paris on March 10, 1895 ^[2].

For what happened to the model after Worth, from Lucile’s stage shows to the camera, read The History of Modeling: From Worth’s House Mannequins to Superintelligence Twins.

Chapter 4. Chanel: comfort as a business model

Gabrielle Chanel was born on August 19, 1883, in Saumur. She started with hats: Chanel Modes opened at 21 rue Cambon in 1910, under a lease that barred her from dressmaking. She modeled her own designs from the start and was photographed for Le Théâtre that fall. ^[3]

1913: a shop in Deauville ^[3].
1916: she bought surplus jersey from Rodier, an everyday knit, and showed her first couture collection that fall ^[3].
1921: Chanel No. 5, described as the first perfume to bear a designer’s name ^[3].
1926: American Vogue captioned her black day dress “The Chanel ‘Ford’—the frock that all the world will wear” (as quoted by Encyclopedia.com) ^[3].
Feb 5, 1954: her postwar comeback. American Vogue quoted her: “A dress isn’t right if it is uncomfortable” (as quoted by Encyclopedia.com) ^[3].

She died on January 10, 1971 ^[3]. Worth built silhouettes out of boning. Chanel built them out of fabric that moved.

Chapter 5. Dior’s New Look, and the women who fought it

At 10:30 a.m. on February 12, 1947, Christian Dior showed his first collection at 30 Avenue Montaigne ^{[5, 6]}. He called the lines Corolle and En 8 ^[5]. In the house’s own telling, Carmel Snow of Harper’s Bazaar said: “My dear Christian, your dresses have such a New Look!” ^[5]

It came straight after wartime fabric controls, and Dior could use 25 yards of fabric for a skirt ^[6]. The backlash was loud. As The Independent tells it:

Britain’s Sir Stafford Cripps declared, “There should be a law” ^[6].
Women in Chicago carried banners reading “Mr Dior, we abhor dresses to the floor” ^[6].
Pickets in the United States held signs reading “Burn Mr Dior” ^[6].
In autumn 1948, on the rue Lepic in Paris, photographer Walter Carone captured older women tearing at a young woman’s New Look skirt ^[6].

Dior’s answer was his second collection, in July 1947, which used even more fabric ^[6]. Rome argued about dyed robes. Paris argued about yardage. It was the same fight: what clothing is allowed to cost, and who decides.

Chapter 6. The agency: who the model works for

Every one of those revolutions needed a woman walking in the clothes. Before the 1940s, agencies found work, but models were expected to set their own rates and collect their own wages ^[12].

Eileen Ford, born Eileen Cecile Otte in Manhattan on March 25, 1922, changed that. She graduated from Barnard in 1943 and modeled for the Harry Conover agency ^[13]. With her husband Jerry she started Ford Models in their New York home; the agency dates its founding to 1946 ^[4], while The New York Times and The Guardian say 1947 ^{[13, 14]}. They sold their car to pay the rent on a Second Avenue office ^[13], next to a funeral parlour ^[14].

What the Fords built still shapes modeling today:

Getting paid. Jerry Ford’s voucher system paid models in advance; before it, models often waited a year or more ^[13]. The Guardian says they were paid in cash every Friday ^[14].
The commission. The Times describes a 10% cut ^[15]; Encyclopedia.com describes a 20% standard, 10% from the model and 10% from the client ^[12].
Terms. Fees for cancellations, fittings and bad weather ^[12], and a five-day workweek ^[13].
The funnel. About 60,000 hopefuls a year; about 100 tested; about 30 established a foothold, by Ford’s estimate ^[16].
Protection. She told Forbes in 1984: “I don’t ever want to tell a mother I don’t know where her daughter is at 2 a.m.” (as quoted by The New York Times and The Guardian) ^{[13, 14]}

The record has another side. The AP reported that she told hopefuls under 5 feet 7 to give up ^[16], and models remembered being told to lose weight ^[13]. In 2012 she dismissed the idea of a models’ union: “Models don’t need that kind of protection anyway.” ^[15] Her test for talent was simpler: “I always said it was an X factor. They just had it.” ^[15] The Fords’ full story is in Eileen Ford Built the Business of Beauty.

Then came the competition.

Wilhelmina, founded in 1967 by Dutch model Wilhelmina Cooper ^[7].
Elite, Paris 1972 and New York 1977. Elite’s own history describes the “great model wars” among the big three ^[8].
IMG Models, founded by sports agent Mark McCormack, which manages models as talent, like athletes, and is now part of WME ^[17].

In the 1970s, New York agencies reorganized as “management companies,” which, The New Republic reports, took them outside the 10% fee cap on employment agencies. A later class action by models settled at $22 million in 2005, the magazine reports, citing sociologist Ashley Mears ^[18].

Chapter 7. The supermodels and the Victoria’s Secret show, 1995–2026

By 1990 the models were more famous than many designers. That October, Vogue printed Linda Evangelista’s line: “We have this expression, Christy and I. We don’t wake up for less than $10,000 a day” (as quoted by Wikipedia, citing Vogue) ^[19]. Read it as a negotiating position: the model sets the floor. Elite says it “revolutionized the modeling industry by giving birth to The Supermodel”; that is the company’s claim ^[8]. The look later turned thinner, and the AP reported Eileen Ford disliked the “waif” look of the early 1990s ^[16].

The show that turned the runway into television:

Year	Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show
1995	First show, Aug 1, at the Plaza Hotel in New York, introduced by Stephanie Seymour ^[9]
1998	The wings arrive ^[9]
1999	A Super Bowl ad drives a webcast; reports put viewers above 2 million ^[9]
2001	Network debut on ABC: 12.4 million viewers ^[9]
2002–2017	Aired on CBS; no show in 2004 ^[9]
2006–2007	The show comes to Los Angeles, at the Kodak Theatre ^[9]
2014–2018	Viewers fall from 9.2 million to 3.2 million ^[9]
2019	Show cancelled, citing falling viewership ^[9]
2024	Returns Oct 15 in Brooklyn, hosted by Tyra Banks; Valentina Sampaio and Alex Consani walk ^[9]
2026	“LIVE from LA” on Sunday, Oct 18, streaming free on YouTube at 4:30 p.m. PT, with screenings in select AMC theaters, a Fantasy Bra with Jacob & Co., and an open casting call at select Simon malls ^[11]

Our desk’s roundup of the reaction is in WeHo Whispers: The Fashion Internet’s Verdict on the 2026 Victoria’s Secret Show.

Chapter 8. Who pays whom: how a fashion week works

There are two business models. Once you see them, you will watch a runway differently.

Model one: the designer pays for the show. In 2019, Vogue Business broke down Christian Siriano’s New York budget. The total ran from about $125,000 to more than $312,000, plus samples. On the return, Siriano said: “it’s really hard for them to see actual return.” ^[20]

Model two: the platform week. A producer runs the venue and production and sells designers a package. The Bureau, which says it has operated since 2016 ^[21], is one. Its own published figures (company figures, not audited):

Designers pay the producer: runway shows $5,000 to $35,000; booths from $2,000 ^[22]. A package includes runway production, hair and makeup, models and staffing; a typical collection is 8 to 20 looks ^[23].
The public pays the producer: for LA in October 2026, $72.95 general admission, from $102.95 reserved and $202.95 front-row VIP, fees included ^[24].
Runway time: about 15 to 20 minutes per designer, and one to two hours for a multi-designer session ^[25].

The Bureau does not publish model pay ^[25], and we won’t guess. What is public is the pattern at “fashion week”-branded shows: BuzzFeed reported pay ranging from nothing, or clothes, up to a few hundred dollars, and one model paid $120 who spent about $200 getting there ^[26]. The New Republic calls payment in trade “practically endemic to the industry, especially for girls just starting out.” ^[18] Event staff are employees: in West Hollywood the 2026 minimum wage is $20.25 an hour for non-hotel workers ^[27].

Chapter 9. Superintelligence runways: the law catches up

For a century, the fight was about commissions and pay dates. Now it is also about copies. New York’s Fashion Workers Act took effect on June 19, 2025 ^[10]. According to the state Department of Labor ^{[10, 28]}:

Model management companies owe models a fiduciary duty.
Commission is capped at 20%, with no signing fees or deposits.
The model gets a deal memo with total pay before the work.
Contracts are capped at three years, with no automatic renewal.
Hours beyond eight in a day are paid at least 1.5 times the rate.
Any digital replica of a model needs her separate, written consent, covering scope, purpose, pay and duration, and an agency’s power of attorney cannot be used to sign that away.

Eileen Ford wanted Friday pay, set fees and a code of conduct. Nearly eighty years later, New York wrote a version of that into law and added a rule she could not have imagined: the model has to say yes to her own digital twin. For how brands are already using Superintelligence models, see the last section of The History of Modeling.

Chapter 10. The view from the pit, October 2026

The Bureau’s LA Fashion Week ran October 16 to 18, 2026 ^[25]. Our photographer shot it from the media pit. The full record of designers, models and photos is in The Bureau Fashion Week LA 2026: The Full Nightlife Report Archive, with the night-by-night story in Late start, packed pit: our photographer’s Day 1 and Who Walked: Every Designer at the Bureau Fashion Week LA Finale Weekend.

From Caesar’s dyed robes to a deal memo for a digital twin, the clothes changed. The questions did not. Who wears what. Who decides. Who pays. Who gets paid.

Keep reading: the Battle of the Gods series

Sources

Suetonius, Life of the Deified Julius, trans. J. C. Rolfe (Loeb, 1914), LacusCurtius. https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Suetonius/12Caesars/Julius*.html
“Charles Frederick Worth,” Wikipedia (tertiary; cites The Times, 1958 and 2008, and the Museum of the City of New York). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Frederick_Worth
“Chanel, Gabrielle (Coco),” Encyclopedia.com. https://www.encyclopedia.com/fashion/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/chanel-gabrielle-coco-0
“FORD Models Celebrates 75th Anniversary,” PR Newswire, May 5, 2021. https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/ford-models-celebrates-75th-anniversary-and-announces-the-return-of-ford-miami-301284336.html
Dior, “The New Look”. https://www.dior.com/en_int/one/the-new-look
Annalisa Barbieri, “When skirts were full and women were furious,” The Independent, Mar 3, 1996. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/when-skirts-were-full-and-women-were-furious-1340021.html
Wilhelmina, “Our Legacy”. https://www.wilhelmina.com/our-legacy
Elite Model Management, “About” (company history). https://www.elitemodels.com/about
“Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show,” Wikipedia (tertiary). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victoria%27s_Secret_Fashion_Show
New York State Department of Labor, Fashion Workers Act. https://dol.ny.gov/fashion
Victoria’s Secret, “Fashion Show ’26” (VS Insider), fetched Oct 18, 2026. https://www.victoriassecret.com/us/vs/vsinsider/fashionshow
“Eileen Ford,” Encyclopedia.com. https://www.encyclopedia.com/history/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/eileen-ford
Eric Wilson, Eileen Ford obituary, The New York Times, Jul 2014 (read via CNBC syndication). https://www.cnbc.com/2014/07/11/eileen-ford-doyenne-and-disciplinarian-of-modeling-industry-dies-at-92.html
Veronica Horwell, “Eileen Ford obituary,” The Guardian, Jul 11, 2014. https://www.theguardian.com/fashion/2014/jul/11/eileen-ford
Tim Teeman, “Eileen Ford: The woman who created the supermodel,” The Times, Mar 17, 2012. https://www.timteeman.com/2012/03/17/eileen-ford-the-woman-who-created-the-supermodel/
Beth J. Harpaz, Associated Press obituary of Eileen Ford, Jul 10, 2014, via Legacy.com. https://www.legacy.com/us/obituaries/nytimes/name/eileen-ford-obituary?id=60246116
IMG Models, “About Us”. https://imgmodels.com/about-us/
“Fashion Week’s Labor Problem Is Our Labor Problem,” The New Republic, Sep 11, 2019. https://newrepublic.com/article/155020/fashion-weeks-labor-problem-labor-problem
“Linda Evangelista,” Wikipedia (tertiary; cites Jonathan Van Meter, “Pretty Women,” Vogue, Oct 1990). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linda_Evangelista
Fawnia Soo Hoo, “What a runway show really costs,” Vogue Business, Feb 5, 2019. https://www.vogue.com/article/cost-of-runway-show-christian-siriano-discount-universe
The Bureau, Paris Fashion Week application page (company page). https://thebureaufashionweek.com/paris-fashion-week/apply/
The Bureau, “Fashion Designer Application” (company figures). https://thebureaufashionweek.com/fashion-designer-inquiry/
The Bureau, “Designer Frequently Asked Questions” (company figures). https://support.thebureaufashionweek.com/hc/en-us/articles/46766532828691-Designer-Frequently-Asked-Questions-FAQ
The Bureau, “How Much Do LA Fashion Week Tickets Cost? (October 2026)” (company figures). https://support.thebureaufashionweek.com/hc/en-us/articles/56384214778771-How-Much-Do-LA-Fashion-Week-Tickets-Cost-October-2026
The Bureau, “Los Angeles Fashion Week” (company page). https://thebureaufashionweek.com/los-angeles-fashion-week/
Hannah Marder, “Are Fashion Week Models Paid?,” BuzzFeed, Oct 31, 2022. https://www.buzzfeed.com/hannahmarder/are-fashion-week-models-paid
City of West Hollywood, “Minimum Wage”. https://www.weho.org/business/operate-your-business/minimum-wage/
New York State Department of Labor, Fashion Workers Act FAQs. https://dol.ny.gov/new-york-state-fashion-workers-act-faqs

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