PARIS FASHION WEEK : MONTAGE ONE

I was intrigued by this front row trio at the Devastée show

Videotape : A front row pro's catwalk technology 

Floodlight Fashion : The venue for the Thimister show was a car garage in the 4th arrondissement

Dedicated : Window display at Collette to honour the launch of Carine Roitfeld's book Irreverent.  She signed copies of the books here with Terry Richardson on the day it pushed 31ºC. Regardless, hundreds of die-hard fans endured the oven-like store to queue. 

Steps to heaven : The daily architecture of Paris never stops inspiring me. The Petit Palais in the early hours of the morning.

Quick Change : Backstage at the Jitrois SS12 showroom. Model Nausicca is putting on the Jitrois 'Imogen' skirt, inspired by yours truly!

Fashion Friends : Audrey, Kimberley and Michael outside the Jeu de Paume for the Anne Valerie Hash show.

Familiar Faces : A portrait of Giorgio Armani at the Kris van Assche LONDERZEEL launch party. 

The Man who would be King : The Godfather of streetstyle photography, Bill Cunningham, sat opposite me at the Carven show (and shot me a cheeky wink too.)

Monks of Glory : Finale at Thimister. Read my full show report with photographs for Notion Magazine HERE.

Audrey and I at the Harry Halim aftershow party

CHARLIE MAY SS12

I was not able to make it to London to see Charlie May's presentation of her first womenswear collection in person, but I instantly fell in love with her vision - simple, pure, insouciantly feminine - just like the girl herself. Charlie, whose craft was honed in the studio of London designer Thomas Tait, includes Anne Demeulemeester in her greatest design inspirations. Charlie May's perfect mélange of pretty and tough appears to me as the essence of today's 21st century girl : empowered, sleek, professional yet playful. Assymetrical sheer skirts evoke dishevelled vintage lingerie, yet a black high-necked vest suggests an armour. There was a medieval charm in Charlie May's studded headbands, but this girl is no damsel in distress. 

The women who colour our history books wore costumes so extravagant that their daily activities were restricted to seated salon parties, reading or at a physical stretch, 'turns around an ornamental garden', dragging their heavy embroidered skirts behind them with deceptively light steps, like a swan. 

Charlie May perfectly captures the point to which we, as women who clothe ourselves for the world, have come. We have adopted the well-cut trouser, the shirt cuff, the leather jacket from men, and made them our own. The Charlie May girl is delicately strong, who captures but also commands a room. 

The models appeared to me as ballet dancers warming up for a performance, supple and fluid but a force of muscle - just like the clothes. 

Photo credits : Russ McLintock

The designer herself wearing the piéce de la résistance of her collection - the blush leather jacket. To contact Charlie visit her blog Girl à la Mode. She is now taking orders for her S/S 12 collection.

THIS SPLENDID TABLE

"If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast." – Ernest Hemingway

I have now been living in Paris for 45 days. 
When you come to a legendary city as a tourist, you try to immerse yourself in a foreign idealism as quickly as possible - forcing yourself to see as many myths as possible in a day, swallowing language, spitting out clichés. A long weekend is spent treading pavements, denying fatigue and perhaps on the last evening you sit in a half-rate bar somewhere near Saint Michel after gloating  round Shakespeare and Company and say 'Yes, this is it! Ah, Paris - it's mine!"
As a new resident, the city opens itself to you slowly. For the first few weeks I was here, I didn't stray farther than the 11th arrondissement where I live on the East of Paris, Le Marais, the Left Bank and the 1st, where I work.  You begin to realise that going for 'dinner' and just drinking wine is the only way you can afford anything on the menu, and that the Sacre Couer actually looks far more spectacular from the Pompidou Centre balcony than the steps of Montmartre themselves. You learn the opening times, and then the cooking times of the bakeries in your quartier off by heart and that you MUST be seen out for 'aperos' with your work friends on a thursday night but never on a Saturday night. 

Paris' speciality is grandeur - sheer scale, size and splendour. What other city's Police HQ resembles one of King Ludwig's castles? Paris's Prefecture de Police on l'Ile de la Cité does. Sometimes the landscape can be overwhelming, so I went in search of a different kind of grandeur - one of decay and names lost in time. A personal splendour, to be found in the Père Lachaise cemetery in the 20th. My brother came for the weekend, and we went in search of our lost heroes, dressed in black and dark glasses. Edith Piaf, Proust, Chopin, Oscar Wilde are buried here amongst Communists, Jews, Artists, Playwrights, Mayors, Poets, Lawyers and burned out Lizard Kings - yes, Jimmy Morrison also lies here. 

I have always had a fondness for cemeteries. The monuments erected to honour the dead far exceed any praise for the living cast in stone or marble. I could have wandered the cobbled paths for hours, counting stained glass windows and dried purple roses. The tomb of Oscar Wilde has been defaced in the name of love - I don't consider it disrespectful as I know the man himself would consider it all a right lark, up there in heaven surrounded by a harem of young boy cherubs...

Pont Alexandre - the most spectacularly grand bridge in Paris

Oh Oscar, you rogue.

View from the Italian galleries, the Louvre.

Tributes for the Lizard King

Parisians are ants