OH, THE GLAMOUR. Front-row intrigue, outrageous clothes, celebrity fun-fests and paparazzi-filled parties. Covering Paris Fashion Week sounds like a good gig, n'est ce pas? Well, yes and no.
Fashion magazines may put a glossy spin on the shows but the reality is a lot more gritty. Really. Editors and buyers, the front-line fashionistas who travel from New York to London, Milan and Paris twice a year, can see up to 100 shows a week - and for every great designer there are at least a dozen duds with nothing to say. Then there's the waiting (an average of 45 minutes for each show), cramped conditions, pushing and shoving, hostile security guards and, of course, uncomfortable shoes and an annoying lack of taxis in Paris.
The autumn/winter womens-wear collections, which wrapped up in the French capital last week, are especially arduous. A group of American editors, led by Vogue empress Anna Wintour, convinced the Chambre Syndicale, which organises fashion week, to condense all of the big shows into the first six days so they wouldn't have to be away from home for too long. Not only did this result in 14-hour working days (in a country where 38-hour weeks are enshrined in law), it made it impossible to see all the shows. Consequently, a lot of the little guys - young, independent designers without enormous advertising budgets - were pushed to the end of the schedule, after everyone had left, or ended up slipping through the cracks. This is a shame, because these are the people who could show something unexpected, some-thing lovingly constructed, something that reminds us of what fashion is at its best: an accurate - if not always pretty - picture of where we are as a culture.
Day One (Thursday March 7): Touch down from Milan, check in, shower . . . and almost miss the first big show, Christian Dior. It looks great for the first time in seasons. John Galliano has finally stopped trying to dress grown women as ravers and refined the multicultural references he injected into his last couture collection. Next season, everyone is going to want to look like a Mongolian nomad with an around-the-world ticket. The show bristles with striped South American knits, Roman centurions' helmets, pagoda-sleeved jackets and fringed moccasins. The fur's flying, too: one over-excited model, working an oversized parka, moults all over the front row, practically inducing an allergic reaction. Who reckons fashion is without its occupational hazards?
Not Belgian design duo AF Vandevorst, anyway. They've posted a sign outside their show (in the Petit Palais, under renovation and looking fabulously worn down) warning: 'Caution epileptics, strobe lights used.' It's no joke. It takes what seems like half an hour and a torrent of screams from audience and photographers for the strobes to fade and reveal a rather banal collection of black and yellow bumble-bee sweaters, back-to-front tuxedos and bomber jackets - a big trend next season.
There are swarms of them at Yohji Yamamoto's show, closing the first day at 9pm and pointing out the difference between real designers and mere stylists. It really is a question of cut and silhouette. Yamamoto plays with both in some amazing lantern-sleeved coats, deconstructed denim and sport-inspired varsity jackets with a YY patch.