From the Archives: How the 1980s Saw Designers Go From Anonymous Atelier Dwellers To Bona Fide Society Fixtures

“Fashion and Society,” by Julia Reed, was originally published in the October 1990 issue of Vogue.

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When Marilyn Bender published The Beautiful People in 1967, she defined the term as "the marriage of fashion and society." Until then there had been society: style-obsessed ladies such as Mrs. William Paley, who embodied her own motto ''You can never be too rich or too thin." And there had been fashion. But until the 1960s the dressers and the dressees, with few exceptions, did not mingle, much less marry. Everybody knew Balenciaga was the greatest couturier of his day, and everybody knew Mrs. Loel Guinness wore his clothes. But who the hell knew Balenciaga?

Now, of course, the whole world knows t