1 Never one to allow false modesty in her way, Sonia Rykiel presents all members of the audience at her show with a list of recent achievements. These include simultaneous exhibitions of her work in Paris and Tokyo, the publication of a monograph about her in three languages and an appearance in a feature film called Riches, Belles, Etc due for release next month. The last of these is claimed as Rykiel's first movie role, but in fact she played a part both before the cameras and behind the scenes in Robert Altman's Pret-a-Porter three years ago. In addition, the show provides an opportunity for the international launch of a new perfume christened, with all due humility, Sonia Rykiel. Because of the designer's long association with knitwear, the fragrance's bottle comes in the shape of a short sleeved sweater. At one point in the collection, a dozen models come down the ramp wearing just such pieces with holster belts containing bottles of Sonia Rykiel perfume.
2 Collette Dinnigan was born in South Africa, grew up in New Zealand, lives in Australia, holds an Irish passport and shows her collection in France. But of course. Dinnigan has been coming to Paris for the past two shows and gradually building up an international reputation and clientele. She is the only Australian-based designer to come to Europe but says after her show on Tuesday "everyone has the same opportunity. I'm not lucky, I just work harder and harder." The current collection has lots of silk crepe slip dresses with lace trims and bra-like shoulder straps and net sheathes encrusted with rich beading. This, like the chinoiserie-style embroidery on satin coats, is all done by hand in Australia. The lavishness of decoration, along with impeccable finish, is one reason why Collette Dinnigan's clothes are now sold around the world, including Liberty's and Brown's of London. Although she tries to visit her father's family in Malahide annually, no shop in this country yet stocks her work. That situation ought to change, soon.
3 A night out with Fashion Television's Jeanne Beker and the decision is taken to attend a show by young French hopeful Fred Sathal from Marseilles, who is presenting a collection for the first time. As usual, the venue is remote, so after failing to find any taxis the entire party takes the Metro - Jeanne insists on being filmed at the station just to show she managed to face public transport. Because the camera crew needs to secure a good position, everyone arrives far too early for the show, leaving plenty of time to go backstage and meet the designer. Two surprises await; Fred Sathal is a woman and her press handler insists that she may not be addressed before the collection has been shown. While waiting to be called by makeup artists and hairdressers, models sit on the floor and play cards or read. A couple of other camera crews tail Sathal but no one speaks to her.
The press handler describes the work as "very atemporal, you know it is outside time". So too is the show, scheduled to start at 9.30 p.m. That moment comes and goes and few of the seats in the auditorium have yet been filled. Finally, at 11.10 the first model appears.etro is not a good idea.
4 John Galliano seems constantly to be raiding an imaginary grandmother's attic. This woman is obviously well-travelled - and well-heeled - with a huge collection of dresses to inspire young John. His latest collection for Dior also suggests granny has a rather colourful past, since the models all look like courtesans from the belle epoque.
Draining the Dior decoration budget, Galliano has transformed the rather bleak showrooms of the Carrousel du Louvre into a late 19th-century boudoir, complete with boiseries and chandeliers.
Afterwards, Nicole Kidman - just one of the celebrities in the audience - is quoted as saying the clothes "seemed more like couture than ready-to-wear". Kidman may have admitted to not attending many fashion shows, but she had a point. Galliano's real love is couture, the creation of individual pieces for a discerning clientele. Later, the head of Dior's press office admits some of the items may not go into production due to lack of demand from shops. Few retailers, after all, are likely to carry many long mermaid-line bias-cut double-sheath dresses in black crepe veiled all over in Egyptian-style silver foil embroidered fishnet. There are rose pink toile de jouy dresses with boned busts and double-bustle at the back, and silver lacquered crocheted wool tops trimmed with lace. Lace is even used on the handful of day outfits shown, around the collars and cuffs of crisp little suits in lilac or black. Beautiful but anachronistic is how this collection looks. Galliano and his granny need to be told that times, and women's needs, have changed.
5 Warehouses seem to hold an irresistible allure for Belgian designers. Show a derelict building on the outer reaches of Paris to any one of them and you can be sure a show will be staged there sooner or later. Dries Van Noten cannot be kept away from the places. His latest collection, like so many others is held in a warehouse with benches placed on either side of a long and narrow walkway. What follows has little or nothing to do with the setting.
Van Noten is fashion's equivalent of a 19th-century orientalist. Everywhere south of Marseilles and east of Istanbul is an exotic source of inspiration. The resulting melange should be a mess but somehow is strangely successful. Having carried out a raid on every culture from the casbahs of Morocco to the hill tribes of Borneo, Dries Van Noten creates a satisfying whole with plenty of satisfying elements such as short-sleeved shirts in Indonesian-style batik prints, T-shirts with discs of dense North African embroidery and sarong skirts embroidered and beaded like Indian wedding saris. cons. This can clearly be seen right at the start of the show in white cotton shift dresses which gather and drape around the body, sometimes folding and tying at the waistline. Roomy striped jackets, of the kind teenage girls pick up for a few pounds at second-hand clothes markets, show Europe also has a place in Van Noten's world. But the east reasserts itself at the close with the arrival of a group of Burundi drummers.
6 For some inexplicable reason, an English journalist has failed to receive an invitation to the Givenchy show and therefore needs to be smuggled into the hall. So too, it seems, do hundreds of other people and, with only one tiny gate being manned by several ill-tempered security guards controlling admission, the situation does not look encouraging. However, by squeezing herself between several other ticket-holders, said journalist does succeed in her ambition, only to wonder why she bothered.
Expectations are high for this show, the second collection from Alexander McQueen since he took over as designer at Givenchy. Demi Moore, who has turned up at all the collections and is rumoured to be interested in making a film on the life of Chanel, receives front-row treatment.