| Paris, the capital of haute couture, is represented nowhere more extravagantly than in the January and July fashion shows. Invitations go out exclusively to the élite of the world's fashion editors and to the two thousand or so clients who don't flinch at price tags between £10,000 and £100,000 for a dress. The world's press have a field day as the top hotels, restaurants and palace venues disgorge famous bodies cloaked in famous names, and every arbiter of taste and style maintains the myth that fashion is the height of human attainment. The truth, of course, is that the catwalks and the clientele are there to promote more mass-consumed luxuries, prêt-à-porter (ready-to-wear) lines and perfumes. A growing disillusionment with these big-business realities and the loss of the client-couturier relationship were partly behind the decision of Yves Saint Laurent, Paris's greatest designer, to retire in 2002, though ironically he himself was one of the pioneers of the process. It's said that YSL had also became disenchanted with the theatrical excess of the younger generation. Certainly the trend over the last few years has been for lavish shows, sometimes staged in unconventional places, such as sports stadiums and even train stations. Enfants terribles John Galliano and Alexander McQueen are known in particular for their wild extravaganzas; in 2002 McQueen chose the medieval setting of the Conciergerie for a show with a sinister edge, in which wolf-like dogs accompanied leather-clad models down the catwalk. Whatever you think about the theatricality and the gap between what the models are wearing and what most people actually want to wear, the Paris catwalk certainly places no constraints on the designer's creativity. Indeed, it makes the other fashion shows look decidedly dull: Milan is too much of a commercial affair to allow for much imagination, New York's shows have, understandably, been more subdued in the last year or two, and London designers can barely scrape enough money together to hire models (these days, models command about forty percent of the budget). London may have produced some of the trend-setting designers of tomorrow – Galliano, McQueen, Stella McCartney, Phoebe Philo, Julien McDonald – but Paris is where they all head for.
| 
