CHEZ PARIS

The competition here is so intense that unless you have a multi-million-dollar backing, like the Gucci Group-owned Alexander McQueen, you can8217;t afford it. Maybe if you are completely cutting-edge and tres chic, like Hussein Chalayan or Sophia Kokosalaki.
Or just plain lucky, like Rajesh Pratap Singh and Manish Arora, two Indian talents who had fashion shows here on February 24. Even Matthew Williamson and Alice Temperley, after outgrowing the upstart-friendly London Fashion Week, headed to the McDonald8217;s of ready-to-wear, New York.

Unlike the press-crazy India Fashion Week, one pass doesn8217;t get me into any show I like Chanel pumps notwithstanding. The salles at Le Carrousel du Louvre yes, they actually allow fashion shows at the best museum in the world are where the younger lot show and are easier to elbow your way in. Exciting new people show here like Andrew Gn and Paul 038; Joe; there8217;s almost never a show here that leaves you unmoved.

Lie Sang Bong, a talented young name from Korea, is showing. His collection is superb8212;structure and volume created from beautiful winter fabrics8212;he betters some of our finest names back home.
Mais oui, c8217;est Paris.

Chez Rajesh Pratap Singh
I JUMP into a taxi and head straight to Rue de Commines, in chic Marais, where in a beautiful white gallery, Raju Pratap Singh to you is having his first-ever Paris show. He has been trying to show in here for three years now, waiting for the right time, the right press agent and enough money.
The room is full of important people seated on pews laid out like a labyrinth. There8217;s Armand Hadida of Tranois one of the biggest fashion trade fairs in the world and boutique chain L8217;eacute;clair. There8217;s Ramesh Nair, the celebrated chief designer at Hermes, Sumeet Nair of the Fashion Design Council of India and his wife Geetanjali Kashyap and Hilary Alexander, of UK8217;s Telegraph, an Indophile who8217;s come in an ugly oxidized silver necklace.
Sitting demurely at one end is Sanjay Leela Bhansali for whose French opera, Padmavati, Raju is doing costumes. At dinner the night after, at a quaint restaurant in the terribly stylish Rive Gauche Yves Saint Laurent8217;s adored Left Bank, Raju tells me how Bhansali made him change the colour of an ensemble after weeks of developing the fabric because it didn8217;t look good on stage. 8220;But perfection is what I love about him,8221; he adds.
Raju8217;s collection, a marriage between Mother Theresa8217;s purple-striped veil and Valentino Rossi8217;s motorcycle leather, is a huge hit. The popular and opinion-making Le Monde writes he brought a new vigour to the Week.
I ask him what he feels about all this. He replies with annoying modesty: 8220;I8217;m okay.8221;

Chez Manish Arora
NEXT is the show that much of Paris is talking about: Manish Arora8217;s. It8217;s his second run here, his previous season8217;s show was such a burst of Indi-kitsch, the French lapped it all thinking it was straight out of Bollywood. Subodh Gupta has done the sets and has placed bartan stands all over the walls, the kind you get in Lalbaug shops, but of course the French adore it. Gupta isn8217;t here thankfully, or the din of clanging pans would have driven the French away.
Manish8217;s show is predictably loud and created to shock. But there are fun bits: Disney characters pop on to tunics and comic-book princes on dresses. The shoes are the maddest, ankle-high wedges with mirror-work on neon.
I want to hop over backstage to catch up with Manish, who I haven8217;t seen all year. But there are bouncers at the entrance, the kind that who could make Andrew Symonds bounce like the cricketer made the Aussie streaker fly. 8220;But I8217;m a friend,8221; I implore one. 8220;So am I,8221; says a Black man, without a crack of a smile.
Model Sapna Kumar saves me from social hara-kiri and gets me a pass. I run in to hug Manish, as everyone else is.
A British reporter asks: 8220;Do you design for anyone in Bollywood?8221;
Yes,8221; he says.
8220;What are their names?8221; she asks, trying to remember how to spell Bachchan.
8220;What difference? My name is enough,8221; he guffaws.
The new Manish chats with me in a French accent. Then he chats with a colleague in a British accent. We barely mind, he8217;s invited us to his party that night.
We were warned it8217;s an 8220;underground scene8221; but this is literally in a basement off Boulevard Hausmann. It8217;s the kind of place where wine is served in plastic cups, music has no lyrics and women tend to feel left out. Manish is grooving with his Japanese buyers and doesn8217;t notice us leave.

Chez John Galliano
I read somewhere that women would kill their grandmothers for a third row pew at a Christian Dior show. With both grandmothers still breathing, I sit on a black teak chair on Row 3 with my name calligraphed on a silver card: Madame Namrata Zakaria it makes me want to marry the next espresso-breath gent I meet.
There are almost 2,000 people under this expansive tent at the Jardin de Tuileries, the garden of the former Louvre palace. There8217;s Lucy Liu in an all-white Dior suit, rapper Kanye West and the ruggedly gorgeous photographer Patrick Demarchelier. And Kate Moss in a floor-length fur coat, in heels I swear were formerly her daughter8217;s pencils.
On the front-row centre, sits Anna Wintour. The editor-in-chief of Vogue USA is beautiful and delicate, arms crossed as she swings her shoulders from one side to the other, smiling at all times. Wintour is nothing like she8217;s made out to be, but then beautiful, thin and successful women are hated by all.
Ironically, at the end of her row is that other fashion czarina, Suzy Menkes, the worshipped critic of the International Herald Tribune, with her famous tuft that looked at a tad better on Cameron Diaz in There8217;s Something About Mary. Grumbach is right, fashion is a funny business.
John Galliano8217;s visiting the Sixties here, gigantic back-combed hair, big makeup and ladylike dresses and suits. It8217;s his nod to commerce and the USA, the driver of the fashion market, where everything is decidedly beautiful and wearable. Boxy jackets with A-line skirts, luxe mink and chinchilla coats and Dior8217;s signature houndstooth checks.
Galliano, the master of all ceremonies, appears for his finale bow a whole minute after the last model walked off, convinced every head in the house is rubber-necking in anticipation. He preens and pirouettes8212;on either side, two mean-looking bodyguards who walk when he does and stops when he does. It8217;s like a mob movie, only Galliano has scripted it himself, with a permitted dash of egotism.

Chez George V
Post the show, we head to the bar at the sophisticated George V Cinq, sank. Pune socialite Natasha Poonawalla, in Dior from top to toe, is sipping Bellinis with Delhi socialite Kalyani Chawla. Kalyani hops over asking, 8220;Champagne, champagne?8221;, so important she needs to say it twice.
Dior8217;s Avenue Montaigne store is de rigeur and Kalyani, their Indian ambassador, offers a tour. Dans la maison magnifique, different rooms have different sections dedicated to couture, accessories, homeware et cetera. Each piece of furniture is designed by an artist or sculptor. At the farthest end is a painting of Monsieur Christian Dior.
In 2006, singer Morrissey released a song called Christian Dior lamenting how Dior wasted his life in perfecting just one thing: fashion.
Comme les Francais.

It8217;s said Dior died choking on a fishbone. But his friend, Paris socialite Alexis von Rosenberg, said that the rumour was the designer died of a heart attack after a strenuous sexual encounter with two men.
Comme les Francais.