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The fashion wars are returning to The Bold and the Beautiful.
As the cast and crew gathered for a ribbon-cutting ceremony on Aug. 19 to mark their first day of taping the long-running soap opera at Sunset Las Palmas Studios — its new home after 38 years at CBS Television City — executive producer Brad Bell teased a new era for the beloved series.
“We are headed into an era of The Bold and the Beautiful — and it will begin here — that is going to be highlighting fashion much more than we have in the past, much more frequently,” Bell told PEOPLE and other outlets present at the event.
He teased that the show will be “heading back to a two-battling fashion house way of storytelling like we did with the Spectras and the Forresters.”
Sonja Flemming/CBS
Bell, whose parents created The Bold and the Beautiful and its sister show The Young and the Restless — doubled down on the series highlighting fashion.
“We’re getting back to fashion,” he declared. “We’re putting fashion into the forefront.”
Bell shared that fans can expect to see “more fashion shows” and “a steady diet of fashion” as Eric Forrester (John McCook) can “open the back door to his office in the CEO office and there you can see models at any time.”
“We’ll see more interacting of designers with models backstage, how it’s all made type of scenes,” he added.
Forrester Creations is the central fashion house of The Bold and the Beautiful.
For many years, Spectra Fashions was the main rival of Forrester Creations.
The fashion house was run by Sally Spectra (Darlene Conley), a larger-than-life redhead, who was a bitter enemy of Stephanie Forrester (Susan Flannery), though the two eventually became friendly.
Conley died in 2007, though the show wrote her character off not by killing her off, but by giving her a happy ending.
There was a short-lived attempt to revive the Spectra-Forrester rivalry by introducing relatives of Sally into the mix in 2017, but the storyline wrapped up in 2018.
Sean Smith/CBS
Bell reflected on what his late parents would feel to see their soap moving to a new home and still going strong early 40 years later.
“I just feel that he would be so proud of where we are, what we’re doing now,” Bell said of his father. “He would say, ‘Just go. Just go be you. Make it your own.’ It’s beautiful memories.”
Bell admitted that the show’s new studio “goes beyond my wildest dreams because I never even dreamt this could happen.”
“The idea of the world of The Bold And The Beautiful, I feel like just a little sprinkling of Walt Disney or something,” continued. “This is our world and if you’re interested in coming to our world, we can show you a world that we’re so proud of and that really represents what we do.”
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The Bold and the Beautiful airs weekdays on CBS (check local listings).
