The Paris (Fashion Week) Review: Studs, chiffon and chablis
To play the official sport of Paris Fashion Week—people watching!—you have to find the right arena. Friday was tricky. Dior at the Tuileries: too rich. Vivienne Westwood: too London. Maison Martin Margiela: too exclusive—the location of our invite was, like most things about Margiela, a mystery. So to find the girls who made Left Bank a synonym for “just right,” I went to their patroness, Isabel Marant: too perfect! Really, I thought it would never end, the stream of chicer-than-thou girls and garconnes—all with leather jackets and lethal heels, mixing metals and chiffons, letting python bags and uncoiled manes swing. Watching, I wished suddenly for a break with such good taste. For someone, anyone, to commit some breathtaking faux pas.
At night, my expat friend Maryam echoed the sigh: “Everyone in black, silver, and Balmain! It’s getting boring.” We were deep in chablis on the fashion-crowded patio of Cafe Flore, and indeed, you couldn’t throw a stone without hitting a stud. When at last some rare bird walked in on neon orange heels, a pillbox hat half-veiling her face, a man beside us burst into handclaps.
When I’d drunk the last drop and missed the last metro, why shouldn’t I slip into Le Montana? It was Olivier Zahm’s party—how that makes it different from any other night at Le Montana, I’m not sure—and instead of giving names at the door, guests gave face. Michael Stipe of REM held court in a corner; Misshape-turned-muse Leigh Lezark clung to BFF Derek Blasberg. Lagerfeld’s newly beloved Sebastien, a couple of cool Lilies, and a bowl-cut Irina (I didn’t recognize her til she spun around, delighted, upon hearing I was “Canadian too!”) made up the model coterie. If these super things are to blame for the heat, they’re also to thank for its sexy effect: the glossy types finally shed their Balmains and biker leathers, along with the blaséness—oh, the shrieks when Bowie was played!—to make fashion watching fun again. Maybe too much fun? When Lindsay traipsed in, looking all beat up (must be all that hard design work she’s doing over at Ungaro) and bleached bright, I knew it was time to go home.
