…………………On one of my Facebook posts I posted a picture of Jac and myself at a family picnic. A model that we used to work with at Anne Klein in the 70s, Carol Brandt, answered me and expressed her condolences about Jac’s passing 5 years ago. I mentioned that I had a picture of her and Jac from the Versailles show in Paris, and she said she’d love to see it. This was a picture from the rehearsal [chairs in background]. The actual photo from the show is the small top center photo, but unfortunately you can’t see Carol’s face…….Carol and Jac opened the Bill Blass segment in the show before the other models followed out. The theme of his presentation was the 20s………The photo at the upper right shows Jac twirling in the Oscar De La Renta segment. It was unanimous that the Americans won the night showing up all of the French designers. The year was 1973……and the show was titled “The Battle of Versailles”. If you google it there are many pictures of the event and a documentary of what happened. jac had many stories….She was 17!
Hi Louis, Robin Givhan wrote a book about it a few years back “The Battle of Versailles: The Night American Fashion Stumbled into The Spotlight and Made History.” She also gave a lecture at F.I.T.
It was an interesting read but I was disappointed that there was about only 1 photo of Jac.
Did Jac do any of the Anne Klein modeling at the event?
Thanks for positing, Elaine
Dear Elaine….Jac did three of the five segments…..Anne Klein, Bill Blass and Oscar De la Renta. She was supposed to do Steven Burrows, but wasn’t able to make the change on time. I don’t know of Robin Givhan’s book, but I believe she was too young to actually be there. Jac always felt the coverage and emphasis was very one sided and she didn’t feel it gave a true story of completely what happened and it didn’t give all of the models the credit they deserved.