My First Fashion Show

My name's Ellie and I'm obsessed. An addict, some might call me. Shakes. Splutters. Physical aches. Just some of the symptoms I display if I don't get my regular fix. Keeping in mind the nature of this blog, I'm sure it has become obvious by now to those who have forgiven me for the lame opening and are continuing to read, just what sort of an addiction I am talking about. This isn't called Fashion Morebidity (think about it... morbid?) for nothing. So why is it you may ask that I am blabbering about such an addiction all of a sudden, if I have named my blog with this in mind all along? Well, you see, that is where we come to the point of all this. If I thought I was hooked before... well, that was then. Now? There is no hope for me. Obsessed. Enthralled. Trapped. Completely and utterly done for. I am a goner. For I have been to my first international fashion show.

What luck that I found myself smack bang in the middle of Paris during Fashion Week. Well, it wasn't an entire coincidence but it wasn't meticulously planned that way. So there I was, on a sunny September Wednesday, the second day of the ready-to-wear shows for the Paris Spring/Summer 2011 season- the last city of the major circuit. With my measly 3MB of international roaming (thanks T-Mobile) I managed to look up the locations of several shows that day and decided I would wander over to le Pont Alexandre III, which seemed to be one of the main locations for the week. As an aside, this is one of the most beautiful bridges in Paris, and is in view of many famous Parisian landmarks: the Eiffel Tower, les Invalides and le Grand Palais to name a few. Wandering aimlessly down the Champs-Élysées, I spied her. Sleek and shiny; groomed, was what she was. With her lithe frame swathed in head-to-toe black, a splash of neon citrus silk glinted among the dark layers and a Chanel 2.55 chain bag hung nonchalantly from her shoulder, she positively smelled of fashion. And she was holding an invitation. Ah ha! She was my answer, my ticket to an elusive glimpse of the goings-on of a fashion show, for a glimpse is all I was ever after. After carefully maintaining my distance behind her (ever the perfect stalker) I noticed a small flaw in my plan. She was lost. After several self-captured pics for her MySpace, she too realised the inevitable and lowered herself to asking some no-name passer-by where indeed she was headed. By this time, I had already figured out for myself the location of the show. Too bad I was pretty sure she was onto my pathetic following attempts, or I could've marched boldly on ahead. So after a few more wrong turns, self-portraits and aimless wandering, we both stumbled off Avenue Montaigne past the Grand Palais and onto Pont Alexandre III.

Fashionable wanderer: my unknowing (and probably unwilling) tour guide, lost at the top of Avenue Montaigne.

Guy Laroche. Admittedly not a designer I know a whole lot about. I could ramble off a whole lot of wiki facts (ha, wiki facts) but as my university lecturers say that never does anyone good. As the designer has since passed on, the artistic director of the house is now Marcel Marongiu, and ready-to-wear shows have been running in Paris since 2007. Anyway, I was quite content with my space on the bridge's parapet; close enough so I could see the action but far enough away I could still be a little incognito. So as the time ticked over to 12.30pm (half an hour after the official starting time) and the guests slowly started to file their way past the obviously uninvited street-style photographers and bloggers (aka me) I'd made up my mind that this was as far as I was going to get, nothing to see here folks. But then Geraldine Saglio (assistant to French Vogue's Emmanuelle Alt) whisked past me, and was ushered into the show at the now empty entrance. And a few of the initial hangers-on started to go in without so much as a second glance. It was now or never. I took a breath and quickly descended the stairs as if I belonged. I stood in front of the gated entrance and before I had a chance to mumble so much as excusez-moi, the security guard stepped out of my way with nothing more than a head tilt. I was in! There I stood, a mere four rows from the front as the beat found its way into my viens whilst models flounced past me towards the wall of steady flashbulbs. And the rest is history.

Yulia Kharlapanova after the show 

Rose Cordero

pictures: mine!