Monday, October 12 10 am: I'm sitting in the Hermes offices above the store on Rue Faubourg St Honore, waiting for Jean Louis Dumas-Hermes, with whom I have an interview. He is perceptive and clever and often deviates from the subject of fashion and onto things like movies about the Hindu monkey-God, Hanuman. At 11 am I dash to the home of Daniel Tribouillard, owner of the Leonard brand; he has a sumptuous penthouse apartment filled with Asian art and antiques and we stay for a boozy lunch.
I have to leave early because the first important show of the Paris season is about to start: Louis Vuitton. It's in a glass-walled building in the middle of a park, and it's a sunny afternoon, so spirits are high. Big hoo-ha when actress Maggie Cheung walks in, although the only people fussing are from Hong Kong. I like the collection, even if it is filled with criminally expensive rain-capes and ponchos. Really slick are the lighter- and cigarette-cases slung around the skinny shoulders of the models: they are in shiny, beige leather and so covetable I consider taking up smoking just to carry one. I'm so close to the models I'm almost tempted to wait until one is in earshot, then turn to my neighbour and say, just for a bit of model-bashing: 'Gosh, doesn't she look a bit tubby then?' Later, and I'm at the Costume National show, although I confess one of the reasons I'm here is because the designer, Ennio Capaso, is utterly scrumptious - and straight - and when he struts onto the catwalk after a collection it is one of fashion's most elevated moments. But everyone else is here to see the clothes from this hip, edgy line. I'm not sure what to make of this one: lots of intellectual posturing, and I've seen so much of it lately - dresses and skirts with panels flapping about, and straps appearing from nowhere and ending somewhere else, and skinny white leather jackets slashed up the back.
Then it's off to the new-ish Vuitton boutique on the Champs Elysees, where a few members of the Asian media are assembling before dinner. The store is huge, the service is good, we are offered champagne and I get so carried away with all the attention I buy a fab pair of bordeaux-coloured, high-heeled mules I've seen on 67 million other fashion editors and that I know I don't need. We pile into a couple of cars and are taken to the Vuitton museum, which is so far I feel as if we're headed for Provence.
There's a rushed tour of the museum, and an even more rushed dinner, because some of us have to leave for a 9.30 Hermes show, which is in the store I was in 12 hours ago. More champagne while we wait, and a divinely luxurious collection shown on non-models: older, or real, women who look strong and wise and composed - as opposed to those sullen, spoiled, pre-pubescent anorexic types typically used. Afterwards, cocktails are served upstairs. I am talking to a group of young stylists and writers from British magazines like The Face and Wallpaper. I ask if they like the collection and they shrug and say: 'The champagne's free, innit?' Tuesday, October 13 11.30 am: Dries Van Noten. He's the designer who put women in skirts-over-pants-under-jackets-under-big-blanket-shawls. We're waiting for ages for the show to start because there is a strike happening somewhere (this is Paris, after all). It's a beautiful collection: lots of ruching, pin-tucks, crumpling, layering and draping - in skirts that to the non-fashion person look like they got caught in the wearers' knickers. Best are his great shawls with shells dangling from them. Then off to another champagne-fuelled lunch and a good old-fashioned gossip with a girlfriend, whose driver takes us to the Dior show later. What a drama this has been: it seems the deliciously mad John Galliano had to curtail his creativity and budget, and schedule the show for the Avenue Montaigne boutique instead of some vast garden or train station or opera house he usually shows in.
Two shows, a total of 250 guests, a lot of people (including princesses and the like) turned away. But Gwyneth Paltrow and beau Ben Affleck are invited, as is fellow actor Marisa Berensen. The usual fuss when they arrive and are swept upstairs. Again, champagne while we wait. And then Galliano's take on chinoiserie: it's Tiananmen all over, in military-green curvy suits with brass stars and red piping, and pleated harem pants so huge they could hide a loudspeaker or two. I'm not sure what to make of it; it's a bit confused and odd, especially when a trio of almost identical girls appears in simple white dresses, and other outfits come with black armbands. Anyway, the press gives the collection a major thumbs-up, so it just goes to show how much I know.
I have a bit of time to kill so I go to Michel Klein, not a big name anywhere, but I hope it will be interesting. It's not, and I guess other people predicted as much, because it takes ages for the room to fill and I suspect they've dragged people in off the street. I think I've had too much champagne and am beginning to feel a bit dozy. Mental note: switch to something harder. Vodka, maybe.
