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"[\n\n](http://blog.gq.com/images/photos/uncategorized/2009/03/16/glenn_6.jpg)\n\n The author at the Chanel show, photo by the Sartorialist.\n\nOkay, I was in Paris. But I was working, covering Fashion Week, for almost two weeks. In Paris they shouldn&amp;amp;#x2019;t call it Fashion Week because it&amp;amp;#x2019;s not; they should call it Fashion Fortnight. Or le fashion marathon. Or &amp;amp;#x201C;Survivor: Paris.&amp;amp;#x201D; It does drag on, but it&amp;amp;#x2019;s a lot easier than Milan&amp;amp;#x2019;s event, which crams about the same amount of shows and business into half the time. It&amp;amp;#x2019;s still a lot of work if you&amp;amp;#x2019;re really trying to check everything out. I heard that Vogue&amp;amp;#x2019;s editor Anna Wintour packed up and went home in protest two days before the end, to pointedly point out that a week shouldn&amp;amp;#x2019;t drag on for eleven days. (Unless, in my opinion, it&amp;amp;#x2019;s a vacation week.) Apparently when she did something similar in Milan a few years ago they cut their extravaganza down to five days. But I hope it doesn&amp;amp;#x2019;t change. If you&amp;amp;#x2019;re in Paris you don&amp;amp;#x2019;t want to work harder than the 35-hour-a-week locals.\n\nHey, its Paris, not Marseilles, or Cleveland. So as hard as you work, as much as you run around, you&amp;amp;#x2019;re in a beautiful and inspiring place and you want to have a good time.  I had that Billy Strayhorn lyric to \"Lush Life\" bouncing around my head, sometimes in the voice of Nat King Cole, sometimes Johnny Hartman, with John Coltrane wailing behind.\n\n_A week in Paris will ease the bite of it,\n\n All I care is to smile in spite of it._\n\nA week in Paris is very nice, even if you spend a lot of it hanging out in weird industrial spaces waiting for an over-the-top fashion show to start with a bunch of bitchy, tired, stressed-out journalists. But I promised myself I wasn&amp;amp;#x2019;t going to write to you fellows about the women&amp;amp;#x2019;s fashion business. I&amp;amp;#x2019;ll just pass on a few observations about Paris. Yes, Paris does ease the bite of it.\n\nIt starts with the physical environment. Being in such a beautiful place puts one in a good mood, thanks to a lot of dead architects, who were often proud enough of their work to sign and date it. Obviously the builders of Paris saw the city, most of which was built during a relatively short, colonialism-funded period, as an artwork on a grand scale. Paris is like Venice in that it&amp;amp;#x2019;s not hard to envision yourself in another era there. Temporal regression is easier in Venice because cars don&amp;amp;#x2019;t get into the picture, but Paris today isn&amp;amp;#x2019;t all that different from what it was a-hundred-and-fifty years ago. It&amp;amp;#x2019;s an atmosphere designed to be beautiful, harmonious, and inspiring. Like Rome, Paris is designed to instill classical values in its inhabitants, and perhaps an ancient sense of the divine. While Paris is filled with beautiful churches, one probably feels the presence of Apollo and Aphrodite more than that of Jehovah or Jesus. The spirit of Paris seems to have the touch of the goddess, and no doubt any genuine capital of fashion and style is under her protection. Let&amp;amp;#x2019;s not forget that the city is named for the fellow who chose Aphrodite as the most beautiful of the goddesses.\n\n[\n\n](http://blog.gq.com/images/photos/uncategorized/2009/03/16/glenn_1.jpg)\n\n Paris finds Aphrodite (Venus) the fairest of them all.\n\nThis trip I stayed at the lovely Hotel Raphael on Avenue Kleber. If I stick my head out the window I can see the Eiffel Tower and the Arc de Triomphe. And when I get out of the elevator on the ground floor I&amp;amp;#x2019;m looking at an actual Turner oil painting. The Raphael is grand and gracious and it dates to an era when people came to hotels to stay awhile. My spacious room had five closets, enough to unpack a couple of steamer trunks. The service is excellent and friendly, as long as it doesn&amp;amp;#x2019;t involve electronics. When I was unable to order a pay-per-view movie one night the concierge didn&amp;amp;#x2019;t offer help, just regrets and apologies. He kept saying he was sorry so sincerely that I felt guilty for complaining. When it came to the wireless internet connection they were more baffled than I was. But when it came to room service, well, that was lovely. One night after working late I ordered dinner and a bottle of wine. They also had a half bottle of the same vintage. The room service man asked if I wanted a full bottle or a half bottle, but before I could answer he said, &amp;amp;#x201C;Yes, a full bottle. Why not?&amp;amp;#x201D; And I knew that he was reassuring me that I was making the right decision, doing what he would have done himself.\n\n[\n\n](http://blog.gq.com/images/photos/uncategorized/2009/03/16/glenn_2.jpg)\n\n The Raphael\n\nIt&amp;amp;#x2019;s also nice when you&amp;amp;#x2019;re in a hotel and two days later absolutely everyone knows your name. In a city not your own it makes you feel you have, if not family, then loyal retainers. You want the staff of your hotel to care if you get that restaurant reservation, and that your taxi driver knows where he&amp;amp;#x2019;s going. But that&amp;amp;#x2019;s Paris. One thing that they do very very well is the hotel. There are hundreds of them in Paris. I used to stay in cheap, charming hotels on the Left Bank in my starving artist days, and I always felt at home: the Angleterre, the Hotel de Seine. I just looked up one that I liked\u2014the St. Andre des Arts is still 71 euros for a single. Like all of the aforementioned it&amp;amp;#x2019;s walking distance to La Coupole, Caf\u00E9 de Flore, Les Deux Magots, and Brasserie Lipp.\n\nI visited Caf\u00E9 Flore, the old hang of Jean-Paul Sartre, once on my trip. I was meeting some friends before going to the opening of La Montana, a new club just down the block, hosted by Olivier Zahm and Andre. Andre just goes by just one name, like Cher or Madonna or Fabio. You know if Andre and Olivier are involved that there will be a certain fabulousness to the place. Anyway La Coupole seemed completely the same as ever. There was a table occupied by the celebrity philosopher Bernard-Henri Levy, his actress wife Arielle Dombasle, and a glam entourage. (Obviously they, too, were destined for La Montana.) HBL, as he is known, looked fabulous as ever. I wondered about his hair products and who were these people he was with. Were they also glamorous philosophers? They looked like it. But you have to love a country where a philosopher can be a gossip-star. I sat with my artist friends Mathias Augustyniak and Michael Amzalag (together known as MM/Paris) and Camille Bidault-Waddington, a very stylish stylist who is married to Jarvis Cocker, and a woman friend of hers. We drank champagne except for Mathias, who was on martinis and speculated as to what sort of meal Olivier Zahm would serve at the Montana at what was described as a small, intimate dinner. Would there be food? At the table next to ours, facing the BHL posse, a peculiar-looking fellow kept turning around and smiling at us and waving. I couldn&amp;amp;#x2019;t tell if he was a friend of someone&amp;amp;#x2019;s or a benign, well-dressed nut. He proved to be the latter but I still liked that he somehow approved of us.\n\n[\n\n](http://blog.gq.com/images/photos/uncategorized/2009/03/16/glenn_3.jpg)\n\n Decor at the Montana, photo by Olivier Zahm\n\nLa Montana is a sort of lovely hole in the wall of rue Sant Benoit, a short stagger from the Flore. A former jazz club, the ground floor is mostly taken up by a long bar and the cavelike downstairs, the domed ceilings of which have been handsomely decorated with mosaics. There are walls featuring entomology drawings, a bar room, and a miniature discotheque room. While some of the more na&amp;amp;#xEF;ve waited for an actual dinner, despite the almost complete absence of tables, the savvy and hungry stuffed themselves on heavy hors d&amp;amp;#x2019;ouevres\u2014caviar, smoked salmon, blinis, taramasalata, and so on, as the Veuve Cliquot flowed along with Andre&amp;amp;#x2019;s new Belvedere X vodka. It was a sort of summit meeting with Purple covergirl Diane von Furstenberg, Betsy Catroux, sexy movie stars Milla Jovovich, Jessica Alba, and Lou Doillon, sexy supermodels Angela Lindvall, Kate Moss, Sasha Pivororava, sexy fashion editor Anne Christiansen, the tall redhead from the New York Times, sexy coatcheck, sexy barmaids\u2026. If I lived in Paris I might actually go to a nightclub once in a while.\n\n[\n\n](http://blog.gq.com/images/photos/uncategorized/2009/03/16/glenn_5.jpg)\n\n Audrey Marnay at Montana, photo by Olivier Zahm\n\nParis is sexy. No doubt about it. It&amp;amp;#x2019;s the world capital of sexiness. Just try to get across town and you see people kissing on all the bridges. Walk through the Tuileries and you see people kissing. Walk past the sexy Richard Serra sculpture toward the big fashion show tent in the Tuileries and photographers are snapping all the sexy assistant fashion editors who look like movie stars.\n\nI even feel sexier in Paris. I don&amp;amp;#x2019;t think I look any different there, but I seem to get better results. In New York I get accosted by male Korean fashion stringers; in New York I get accosted by beautiful girl photographers. I suppose if I spent more time in Paris it might start to affect the way I dress. I know that when I packed for the trip I packed three different scarves. I wouldn&amp;amp;#x2019;t have done that for Toronto.\n\nIt&amp;amp;#x2019;s important to wear a scarf in Paris, especially if you want to pass as a local. When I&amp;amp;#x2019;m in Paris I&amp;amp;#x2019;m always flattered if someone stops and asks me for directions. It means I look good. I feel the same way in Rome. It&amp;amp;#x2019;s a compliment. I actually packed three scarves for Paris, and could have picked up a few more. My second to last night there I actually used my big checkered Paul Smith scarf as a face mask when John Galliano made it snow indoors, using some suspiciously noxious chemical that had the front row stalwarts in coughing fits, as part of a spectacular though annoying light show that accompanied his riotous runway parade. In Paris you should always wear a scarf, even if you&amp;amp;#x2019;re in a T-shirt.\n\nParisians aren&amp;amp;#x2019;t over-the-top fancy dressers the way Italians or Britons are. They generally a favor a simple look, but one that is well thought out and has the finishing touches. As with my Friend Olivier, who looks basically the same every day in his jeans, leather jacket, and aviators, each item has been carefully selected, and what looks the same is actually one of similar rotating elements. He has lots of variations on those amber aviator glasses, the jeans, and black leather jackets. A man should have a look of his own, and not be a mannequin. Clothes don&amp;amp;#x2019;t make the man, the man makes the clothes.\n\nParisians can be spectacularly eccentric in their turn out, but you rarely see someone that you would describe as a fashion victim. You do see ensembles that are very extravagant and costly, but rarely do you see someone dressed head to toe in someone else&amp;amp;#x2019;s idea. Parisians have a knack for putting a look together out of components in their own style, and often it is charmingly retrospective.\n\nParis encourages quirkiness. This is, after all, the land of the beret. It&amp;amp;#x2019;s okay to have a moustache here. Or smoke a pipe, or wear a fedora or a Bavarian hat. Or have a dangling watch chain. I think that what would ordinarily seem to be affectations are encouraged here because they are not so much affectations as affirmations. They affirm the individual within a context of tradition. There&amp;amp;#x2019;s something rather nice about the peculiarities sported by Parisians as personal trademarks. Maybe the expression &amp;amp;#x201C;doing your own thing&amp;amp;#x201D; reaches its zenith here, accent on the own. Bohemianism is quite acceptable and almost de rigeur in some ways, and so a person marks his stylistic turf. And while this is the capital of fashion, there is no mania for the latest except among the hardcore bourgeoisie. There is no pressure to conform to this season and abandon last year&amp;amp;#x2019;s garment. Paris loves variation but is suspicious of gratuitous change, which is one of the reasons that buildings and institutions are preserved. There is a lovely form of conservativism to the French. It has its excesses in intolerance and nophobia, but it is no coincidence that the word resistance tends to conjure up the word French.\n\nOne of the things I enjoy about the French is their formality. Their language is formal. We don&amp;amp;#x2019;t have the tutoyer, the formal and familiar form of the second person. We have abandoned thee and thou, perhaps unfortunately. But the French go around saying, basically, &amp;amp;#x201C;I prithee have a glass of champagne.&amp;amp;#x201D; They don&amp;amp;#x2019;t call people they don&amp;amp;#x2019;t know \"honey\" and \"sweetie,\" and while this seems like a small thing I believe that it informs their entire social structure. It always bugs me in New York when I meet someone and on taking their leave they plant kisses on my cheeks. It doesn&amp;amp;#x2019;t happen in France and I wound up discussing this with a French business colleague. I told her &amp;amp;#x201C;I don&amp;amp;#x2019;t kiss on the first date. Or the first meeting.&amp;amp;#x201D;\n\nIf an American is an intellectual or an aesthete or bohemian or cool then conservatism is generally considered a bad thing, but this propriety of the French, when you look at it, is not at all the enemy of change. The Parisian creatives have a certain adorable fuddy-duddyness to them that their American counterparts lack. They appreciate the old niceties, the aesthetics of the brasserie and the caf\u00E9, the coffee and baguette and pastis and the coupe de champagne that is unchanged. The old cuisine that has fought back against the new cuisine. If something is perfect, why change? And so much of Paris remains the same while the skies go from gray to blue to that comforting gray again.\n\nA week in Paris, a long week in Paris, does ease the spite of it. It&amp;amp;#x2019;s a nice break from the electronic assault of America, from the tabloid-ism and the trend worship and New York&amp;amp;#x2019;s horrible architectural travesties, weird towers going up where you used to park your car. I always come back from Paris a little happier and a little slimmer. I don&amp;amp;#x2019;t know exactly why slimmer, because I eat what I want, but I think that the culture has a way of making you not eat too much or drink too much. Maybe there is a clue in the croissants, in the raisin danish, my personal favorite. In Paris the latter is a large communion wafer. In New York it&amp;amp;#x2019;s the size of a shuffleboard puck. And a croissant still looks like a croissant, not a football.\n\nYes, I enjoy Paris more and more. It&amp;amp;#x2019;s a city made for a stroll, where it seems easy to strike up a conversation about jazz or poetry or the meaning of life. You can call a taxi or watch the Eiffel Tower strobe madly on the hour. And maybe some day on a stroll I&amp;amp;#x2019;ll come across my dream car, A Citroen DS station wagon, parked there with a sign that says \"a vendre.\" It&amp;amp;#x2019;s a place where dreams come true."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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