Cindy Crawford could not pose for glossy magazines and strut down catwalks forever. Models, after all, have notoriously short shelf lives. And at 23, Crawford was hardly an ingénue. So when
MTV asked her to host a new fashion-focused show in 1989, she not only said yes — she offered to do it for free. “My agents thought it was a waste of my time,” Crawford later said in “ I Want My MTV ,” an oral history of the music-video channel. “I was making so much money modeling, per day, why take away from that?” Oh, how wrong they were. “House of Style” turns 35 this May. The beloved MTV series, hosted for six years by Crawford, took viewers behind the scenes of the
fashion and modeling worlds — a glamorous, irreverent and intimate blend of haute couture and pop culture. Where else could you see the members of Duran Duran shopping at Sears? Or supermodel Naomi Campbell applying zit cream? Or fashion designer Todd Oldham taking a hacksaw to a pair of boots to create sandals? “Organized guerilla,” Oldham said when asked about the vibe of “House of Style,” where his DIY segment, “Todd Time,” aired for four years. “It was very influential,” he added. One segment, “Lazy Guy Grooming Tips,” made him a cult celebrity. “For at least 10 years, somebody would come up to me and say, ‘You taught me how to cut my hair,’” he recalled. “I still hear it!’ “House of Style” was part of a wave of fashion TV that emerged in the 1980s and ’90s.
CNN had “Style with Elsa Klensch.”
Canada had “FashionTelevision” with Jeanne Becker and “Style File” with Tim Blanks. In 1998, E! launched the Style Network, featuring wall-to-wall fashion content. Soon, practically every local network affiliate and public access channel had its own style show. These shows turned models into supermodels, designers into pop stars, runway presentations into extravaganzas, and any enthusiast with a camera and a lot of pluck into a host. “Oh, there were so many,” said Lauren Ezersky, who hosted one of these programs, “ Behind the Velvet Ropes ,” on
New York City’s public-access television from 1989 to 1995 before it moved to the Style Network. “I interviewed Alexander McQueen in bed,” Ezersky said in her thick Yonkers accent, laughing. “You know, found him the night before out partying and tracked him down in his hotel room. “But there’s nothing like that now. And fashion is more popular than ever.” MTV had launched in 1981 as a
music video channel. By the late ’80s, it had already begun to expand into news, politics, sports and culture. Fashion and beauty brands were hungry to market their products to the channel’s hip audience. The sales team called up news director Doug Herzog and asked if he could start covering style. “Normally we were very resistant to what sales would suggest to us,” Herzog said. But fashion didn’t seem too much of a stretch for the channel that had made
Madonna a style icon. “Fashion and music were always tied at the hip, whether it was the Beatles or the Rolling Stones or even Frank Sinatra in the suits and the hats,” Herzog said. “Particularly in the age of video, where it was all about presentation.” Herzog tapped producer Alisa Bellettini to come up with an idea for a show about style. Bellattini, who lived in the East Village and wore all black, initially wanted the Sex Pistols’ Johnny Rotten to host. But Herzog had a different idea. Morning Report delivers the latest news, videos, photos and more. Please provide a valid email address. By clicking above you agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy . Never miss a story. “My wife read all the fashion magazines of the day, and Cindy Crawford was on all the covers, and I had a giant crush on her,” Herzog said. Crawford not only was game; she said she would forgo a salary for the show’s first year. “That’s how badly she wanted to be on TV,” Herzog added. “House of Style” debuted in May 1989. Its first episode featured rappers Salt-N-Pepa and Spinderella trying on summer dresses, Winona Ryder holding forth on French fashion, and RuPaul sashaying at the first annual Love Ball, a party and fashion show that raised money for AIDS research. Crawford — wearing skin-tight Alaïa — introduced all these segments in a stilted style that somehow made her more appealing: a preternaturally gorgeous girl next door. “It’s funny: Cindy’s a wild sophisticate, but she presented herself in an open-eyed way that could represent the viewer,” said Oldham. “Even though she had a front row seat to all these very fancy situations, she somehow made it seem really special.” “House of Style” gave Crawford a voice — and turned her cohort, heavily featured in “House of Style,” into supermodels. The following year, she would star in a now-iconic Pepsi ad and appear in George Michael’s music video for “Freedom ‘90,” along with Naomi Campbell, Linda Evangelista, Tatjana Patitz and Christy Turlington. “I’m not sure that would have happened without the influence and popularity of fashion television,” said “Elsa Klensch” producer Karen Altman of the supermodel phenomenon. Before Ezersky interviewed McQueen in bed and Crawford interrogated rappers in Rio about thong bikinis, Elsa Klensch stormed Fashion Week with a cameraman and a microphone. “She was the first person to take a video camera into a fashion show,” said John Filimon, who wrote for Klensch for 10 years. “The pit was all still cameras at the time, and the photographers were so upset when she brought in a video camera and a tripod and an operator. We took up so much space!” Klensch always asked designers the same questions: What are your colors? What are your fabrics? And what are your silhouettes? “And after you answer those, you could just go on and say anything you wanted,” 94-year-old veteran reporter Marylou Luther told The Post. “The designers greeted her with open arms . . . It was the first time fashion really had a voice.” “Style with Elsa Klensch” debuted in 1980 on CNN, the same day it went on the air as the world’s first 24-hour news cable channel. At its peak, the weekly program reached 200 million viewers internationally. “Everyone watched ‘Style With Elsa Klensch,’” said Altman, who worked on the show for nearly all of its two-decade run. Even Kurt Vonnegut — author of such dark, absurdist satires as “Slaughterhouse Five” — was a fan. “I can’t remember exactly if it was a phone call or a note, but he did contact us to say he liked a segment,” Altman said. Klensch — with her distinctive
Australian accent, straightforward demeanor and signature black bob — proved a grounding guide to the operatic, high-octane world of fashion. “She treated fashion like news and science,” Oldham said. “Elsa Klescn was to fashion what Julia Child was to food,” said Robert Thompson, professor of popular culture at Syracuse University. “Because she took it seriously. You know, most people at that time weren’t exposed to people who took fashion seriously. I think there are a lot of people who work in fashion now who can point to her show as a real inspiration.” Fashion journalist Emil Wilbekin agreed. Growing up in Cincinnati, Saturday mornings spent in front of the TV watching “Style With Elsa Klensch” were “sacred.” “It was like the pages of
Vogue coming to life,” he marveled. “I think years later, when I would become a fashion director at Vibe, and later editor in chief at Vibe, I already kind of saw myself there because I had grown up watching ‘Style With Elsa Klensch.’” Crawford left “House of Style” in 1995, and the show continued with Shalom Harlow, Amber Valletta and others. Yet it fizzled out and aired its last episode in 2000. “Style With Elsa Klensch” ended in 2001. By the 2010s, many of fashion news shows were replaced by red carpet programs and reality TV competitions like “America’s Next Top Model” and “Project Runway,” which treated fashion less like an art than as a sport. With the advent of the Internet and later
Social Media, fashion brands no longer needed TV — or journalists — to get their designs out to the world, noted Wilbekin. They could post shows, along with behind-the-scenes content, themselves. “Once you have
Twitter and then Instagram, it changed the way people could consume fashion,” said Wilbekin. “Those shows didn’t need to exist.” Still, we live in a world created by “House of Style” — where short-form content rules and anyone could hop on TikTok and offer their opinions on the latest Margiela show, or post a runway-inspired makeup tutorial on Instagram. For every bland influencer-peddled “sponsored post,” there’s something fresh and entertaining and utterly new, like Liana Satenstein’s delightful
Instagram Live series turned
YouTube show “NEVERWORNS,” which delves into the rarely- or never-worn items of clothes hiding in fashionistas’ closets. She counts Ezersky as a major influence. “She kept it pure and fun,” Satenstein told The Post. “It felt a little raw, and not super manicured. It just felt like you’re in the room with her.” “I think we’re a little nostalgic for ‘House of Style’ because it seems like a simpler, more innocent time before the mega branding of fashion had really taken over,” said fashion commentator Simon Doonan — whose next book, “ The Camp 100 ,” comes out in September. “It opened the door to a lot of people to think, ‘Maybe fashion isn’t this sort of tight-assed exclusionary world: it’s actually kind of impulsive and fun, and anyone can have a go.’ ”