Maybe it's because everyone's still partied out after the big 2000, but Paris is lying low. The Insider would like to tell of soirees every night, endless Krug and wanton dancing till dawn, but the reality is very different. After a month-long stint of fashion shows in four far-flung cities, the fasherati can talk of little else but health spas, chiropodists and colonic irrigation. Healing thyself is high on their list of priorities - and to this end, Mandarina Duck's little "happening" in Paris was well subscribed. The company sponsored three young designers - S Wauchob, Gaspard Yurkievich and Dorothy Perret - to show its small collections in a specially constructed venue with a chill-out zone (very un-Paris) which offered food and drink aplenty, a library full of the latest obscure French style mags and - joy! - free Shiatsu massages. We came. We ate. We stayed longer than was seemly.
Colette on the Rue St Honore is every fashion follower's first stop in Paris: the place to shop for ludicrously expensive clothes and limited-edition eye make-up remover. But the competition gets tougher all the time, and the latest fashionable Paris boutique - Beauty By Et Vous, on the Rue Royale - looks set to pack them in. It certainly did on the opening night: British journalists were delighted to see clothes by avant-garde Brit talents Robert Cary-Williams and Jessica Ogden, jewellery by Jade Jagger and smellies by Penhaligons and Molton Brown holding their own among an eclectic selection of desirable goodies from all over the world. Luckily, the crippling combination of homesickness and champagne dependency could be swiftly dealt with in the bar around the corner.
It was back to Colette the following night for "Rodeo Girl", an exhibition of portraits of American rodeo queens by US photographer Lisa Eisner. A full house of fashionistas braved a ground floor covered in wood shavings to support Eisner, a former American Vogue fashion editor, and take in the technicolour glory of the big-haired, pearly teethed, tight-jean clad rodeo girls - both on the walls and in the flesh, in the form of Miss Texas Rodeo, who had flown in specially. Sponsored by Polo Ralph Lauren, this was an all-American extravaganza: Bud replaced bubbly, while red bandanas took the place of the red velvet rope outside. And as if that wasn't more than enough atmosphere, waiters (serving the world's first, and possibly last, re-fried bean canapes) wore stetsons and T-shirts bearing the slogan: "If it's got tires or tits, it'll give you trouble." Charmed, we're sure.
