News : Notes from Paris

It's Thursday afternoon ,and we touch down at Charles de Gaulle airport and get the RER train to the Gare de Nord. The sun is shining and Paris is looking at its glorious best. We head to our hotel which has a quirky North African flavour ‘complemented’ by china cats in the goldfish tank. Having dropped our bags off and put the prices on the belts, we then go to the exhibition venue to set up our stand and find it is actually in the Louvre. As we are walking in we pass a group of life-size sheep sculptures, blue hippos and a lama. The room we are in overlooks the gardens of the Tuileries, surrounded by the royal palaces where you can just imagine Marie Antoinette and her court wandering round the Palais Royale and the gardens. In the room to our right are display cupboards full of Lalique and Tiffany glassware and beautiful carved wooden panels.

Friday, after a wonderful nights sleep (a bed to myself and no child waking me up in the night..) we head off for a breakfast of croissant and coffee at the local café. Feeling replete, we saunter down Rue Richelieu enjoying the fascinating mix of shops selling ancient coins, stamps from around the world and antiquities intermixed with galleries selling contemporary art, before heading to Rue de Rivoli and the Louvre.

The Paris shows are in full swing, heaving with women in black puffa coats and dark glasses with the ubiquitous oversized handbag dangling off their arm and men wearing dark rimmed glasses and a beret perched at an insouciant angle on their head. As always the Japanese are here in force with their quirky take on fashion that only they can get away with. Wispy layers of torn chiffon worn over tight jeans and impossibly high and impossibly tiny boots. Only the petite Japanese can take several looks, mix them up and come out looking totally pulled together in a non pulled together way.

The air is punctuated by heavy scents and strong accents as these fashionistas move from one show to the next. There is an air of excitement as leggy models and buyers from around the world jostle with the tourists to navigate the streets between shows, making sure to dodge the lap dogs, stretching their legs before being deposited back into their designer dog carriers.

As the sun sets on the first day of Paris Fashion Week the Eiffel Tower looks resplendent with it lights twinkling against the back drop of a deep blue evening sky tinged with pink and we head off for a well earned Margherita …cocktail - not pizza.