What’s a socialist city doing showcasing haute couture?
On Tuesday, my colleague Stephen Doig wrote that the atmosphere during Paris Menswear Week was the most unpleasant he could remember. Unlike Stephen, I arrived a few days later for the couture shows, and didn’t get caught in any demos, although it was impossible to get from Gare du Nord to our hotel because so many roads were closed for the protests that have become a weekend fixture in this city.
It’s a standing joke that Parisians do much of their socialising on a march, rather than at the gym or a bar like their neighbours across the Channel. But since the gilets jaunes, the marches have assumed a more menacing face.
After more than an hour of ever-increasing circles, we abandoned our taxi and walked the last 20 minutes, hoping the driver would be able to deliver the luggage at some point. He did that evening, but only by walking there from the parking place he eventually found several roads away.
The sclerotic traffic meant many journalists missed the Paul Smith show, up in Montmartre. A shame
– it was full of the colourful, well-made, unpretentious gender-fluid trouser suits he’s been doing forever (trousers are back big time, judging from the past week).
Sir Paul was relaxed about the chaos. At a dinner that night to celebrate his half-century in fashion – he still owns all his business – he was only concerned that his guests had a good time. Food was prepared by the chefs from St John, his favourite restaurant in London, and many of the guests – from One Direction’s Niall Horan to acting royalty such as Sir Ian Mckellen, Mark Strong and Bill Nighy, and up-and-comers such as Jonah Hauer-king, Laura Carmichael and Anya Chalotra – were, too.
Maybe Sir Paul’s used to curtailed opening times. “When I opened that first shop in Nottingham back in 1970,” he recalls, “we knew it would never make money, so we only opened three days a week.”
My other highlight of couture week was Givenchy by Clare Waight Keller. Givenchy, an erstwhile favourite of Meghan’s, is probably a bit too major for her now, what with all the jewelled and feathered strapless bubble dresses and puff balls – unless she’s heading to the Oscars, although given how safe everything is on the red carpet in Hollywood these days, perhaps not.
The only person with the cojones to wear it might be Lady Gaga or Billy Porter. But this is how couture should be – anything but humdrum. The same goes for Valentino. While some of it lacked the maison’s usual lightness of touch – those fishtail skirts practically hobbled the models – the colour combinations and the eveningwear were CBD oil for the soul. It’s hard to be a miserabilist when you’re looking at a scarlet-lined pink crêpe gown with an exploding constellation of feathers for a bodice. I think this may also be the first time Thatcher hair has been celebrated on the catwalks.
There’s some irony in the epicentre of fashion also being a precarious place to have a fashion business now. Remo Ruffini, the CEO of Moncler, which is once more a hugely successful (in other countries) outerwear brand, told me that their flagship on the Faubourg Saint-honoré, one of Paris’s two glitziest shopping streets, has frequently had to close on Saturdays for the past year, as shoppers stay away for fear of getting caught up in a riot. Other brands, from Alexander Mcqueen to Dior, have had bricks through their windows. It’s precisely those brands with which the gilets jaunes and France’s myriad protest groups (one of Sunday’s demonstrations was against the legalisation of sperm donations) ought to find solidarity. Granted they’re catering to often stupendously wealthy billionaires, but their couture pieces are made in Paris (in Mcqueen’s case, London) by skilled workers with protected rights. But France’s socialism doesn’t always sit comfortably with its luxury expertise. How strange it’s such a champion of both.