Violet Velvet Mittens: We’ll Always Have Paris...

So, Paris fashion week Spring/Summer 2009 begins on Monday. Are you ready for it? As George Bernard Shaw once said, “A fashion is nothing but an induced epidemic,” so be sure to pack your Echinacea. To be stylish is a lot easier than being fashionable. Style is classic, continuity, longevity. Fashion is knowing the trends and the hot spots before they become public knowledge. This can be equated to the illegal practice of holding inside information on stocks and shares. However, instead of trading on the stock markets, we are trading on the social strata, the fashion Stasi, the Mafiosi mode, in an attempt to gain the social favours and recognition that such wisdom brings.

The fashion crowd can be compared to a swarm of bees. Unlike in nature, we have several queen bees, but distance between them has to be maintained otherwise things could really get nasty & stings could appear. Anna Wintour really excels in her queen bee role. Not only does she spot fashion and publish it accordingly, she actually makes fashion: the designers value her opinions. (Whispers across the globe however that this queen bee’s supremacy may be on the wane: American Vogue is getting thinner by the day, and cover leads have resorted to tabloid-y headlines – Jen Aniston: “What Angelina Did Was Very Uncool”. With the launch of India Vogue in September 2007, could this nation’s publication be the daughter queen of Anna’s elder?)

Paris fashion week is celebrated for its haute couture, its attention to detail, and its fantastic displays of self-worth. What have we got to look forward to come Monday? Well, we can expect there will be the usual size zero debate to keep the media hounds happy, but these discussions are considered weary & unfashionable by those in the know: give the models a burger & a BMI test & we’ll all be happy. Attendees of shows naturally have to come dressed in the designer of the day, but the easiest way to approach this is to choose an all-black ensemble. This way, if you haven’t got the contacts to get hold of the collection’s latest wares, at least you’ll blend in & no-one will notice that your clothes may in fact be a few weeks old, or *gasp*, off the hanger.

Being a celebrity, it pays off to choose your shows carefully. The PR doyennes for both fashion houses & celebrities are working top speed to align their aesthetics and synergise their choices so that the final image projected to the international media is apt. Last year, as mentioned in previous posts, we had Emma Watson’s Coming Out Parade, with her attendance at shows such as Chanel, Dior, and Sonia Rykiel. Maybe this year will be the turn of Julia Robert’s niece Emma Roberts, who attended Fashion Week-New York but a few months ago.

Weather forecasts for Monday predict heavy rain in the French capital. One thing we can be certain of is that the queen bees and the fashion darlings will remain dry as a desert in Arizona: only the pack get rained upon.

If the dress fits...

Purple haze: fashion shows never take place on time, & this is one of the reasons why – there’s a hell of a lot of preparation to do...

Is the light right?

Chanel is synonymous with pearls. Coco Chanel herself infamously remarked that a lady should always wear a string or two of pearls around her neck to light up her face. Here, the concept of pearls is revisited through bronzed beads: