But there is a price to pay for all this glamour - not least, the inconvenience of crisscrossing Paris in dense traffic several times a day. So the Paris fashion organizers have started trying to corral as many shows as possible into the mid-town area around the Louvre. The Louvre is a spectacular setting, especially the Cour Carre, which was tented and used for fashion for a few years. The lion's share of shows nowadays, however, are in the underground Carrousel du Louvre, the immense commercial space carved out by architect I.M. Pei. In part, its display areas and auditoriums were purpose-built for fashion shows, with shared central installations such as parking garages.
More exotic locales remain an integral part of some designers' visions.
Louis Vuitton's shows return regularly to the soaring greenhouses in the post-modern Andre Citroen public gardens on the western edge of the city. This week Kuki de Salvertes, a much-watched guru of the moment who operates in the trendy Oberkampf district, persuaded Olivier Theyskens to use a giant recording studio outside Paris and convinced another client, Castelbajac, to show amid the giant fossils of the Jardin des Plantes. What all these venues have in common is enough space to accommodate the virtual consumers of fashion shows, television audiences.