We got here during Paris fashion week, and though my invitations to the shows got lost in the mail yet again this year, we did spot a model from the Chanel runway gliding around our neighborhood one evening. I knew because she was about nineteen years old, five-eleven, slim as bamboo, with a platinum Dutch boy haircut, and also I saw her on YouTube. She was with two vastly inferior guys who trailed behind her.

That was not at all related to my annual visit to the Galliera Museum of fashion history, which was this year hosting a exhibit called “100 Years of Paris Vogue.” Serious fashion bigwigs had been to the opening a few nights before (another lost invite), but I showed up bright and early clutching my phone with its vaccination QR code and my timed-ticket QR code. You know I love fashion, but I also love magazines and the combination was too great to resist.

I saw a zillion photos, letters back and forth between American Vogue and French Vogue, and videos of famous fashion photographers blowing fans at models and telling them they’re amazing, baby.

It was a thrill to see the early ’60s originals in the flesh. Or in the fabric, if you will. Imagine seeing a real Courreges suit that was not on Jackie Kennedy or Audrey Hepurn, but in a glass case in front of me.

There was a genuine Chanel suit, copies of which continue to flood the market.

And—Lord, take me now—the original Yves St. Laurent Mondrian dress that we all had copies of in the early ’60s.

The chronological exhibition charged ahead into fashion I didn’t understand. Then I came to the perfect Covid outfit by Rick Owens—a social distancing number that reminded me of the garb worn by medieval plague doctors.

Enough of that. I’d be a bad fashion blogger if I didn’t tell you about street fashion in Paris.

From the bottom up, shoes are all white sneakers or black boots. Unless you have white boots.

In fact, white is the new black.

If you are a woman you have to get one of these big scratchy plaid jackets.

You need an accordion pleated skirt like this:

Hunter and kelly green are big.

And if you are a man—wait for it—orange trousers!

Tom is refusing these. I’m so glad.

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