On October 26, 2025, Vogue World: Hollywood will celebrate the rich conversation between film and fashion, centering the most inspiring characters in cinema history. The fashion and film tribute will take place on the Paramount Pictures Studios Lot in sunny Hollywood—one of the oldest film studios in the world and the last still headquartered in the famed Los Angeles district. In the lead-up, we’ve been poring over all the glamorous lore that surrounds Paramount Studios, from its early 20th-century origin story to the cast of legendary characters who graced both its lot and its films.
The front gate to Paramount Studios in the 1920s.Photo: Getty Images
The story of Paramount Studios begins, as many good stories do, with an underdog. Adolph Zukor was born in Hungary in 1873 and lost both of his parents by the age of seven. Nearly a decade later, he arrived in New York to chase his dreams. He began with a $2-a-week job sweeping floors at a fur store and studied English and business in the evenings, eventually investing in nickelodeon theaters. After securing the U.S. rights to the French-produced Queen Elizabeth—one of the first feature-length films shown in America—Zukor founded the Famous Players Film Company in 1912. He began distributing his films through a newly formed distribution company called Paramount Pictures. Around the same time, the Jesse L. Lasky Feature Play Company (which counted Cecil B. DeMille among its founders) was also producing films in Hollywood. In 1916, Zukor orchestrated the merger of Famous Players and Lasky’s company, and together they took over Paramount Pictures. This unified entity eventually evolved into what we now know as Paramount Pictures.
Actress Marlene Dietrich leaving Paramount Studios after a day’s work.Photo: Getty Images
Actor and singer Bing Crosby on his way to film Top o’ the Morning.Photo: Getty Images
In 1926, they broke ground on a new Hollywood studio that would bear the Paramount name. It cost $1 million to build and stood on a 26-acre lot that had four large sound stages. It also featured the Bronson Gate with a Spanish Renaissance belfry on top, crafting a striking entrance to the studio. A year later, Paramount won its first Academy Award for Best Picture for Wings.
The following few decades were a golden age for Paramount. Actors and actresses were contracted and traded by various studios, and it was throughout this period that legends such as Bing Crosby and Mae West came to prominence, and when films like Sunset Boulevard were gracing the silver screen. And the fashion! The first credited costume designer for Paramount was Clare West, and the studio’s wardrobe department—as one might guess—was a vital player in a film’s success. Many of the most lavish and extravagant costumes were seen in De Mille’s films, like the memorable feathered headdress worn by Gloria Swanson in Male and Female (1919) that was designed by Mitchell Leisen. The Paramount Archive for costume and props contains tens of thousands of pieces that date as far back as 1914.
