Miss Jackson

Early this morning, at the crack of 10 a.m., we were sitting on a bench waiting for the Balenciaga show to begin. The show is always a rather small, low-key affair and so it was surprising to see that it had become a bit star-studded. The Olsen twins arrived looking a lot like a couple of drowned mice. Their hair was pressed close to their heads, and they were swaddled in coats. They were approached by a few photographers but nothing like the media swarm that greets them at the New York shows. The photogs at Balenciaga were there for the clothes.

Janet Jackson (Peter Kramer/Getty Images)

Close on the heels of the Olsens was Janet Jackson. She arrived with a bodyguard so wide that he could easily block out the sun. All we kept thinking was that if someone ran up to Janet and grabbed her handbag, he'd surely be able to outrun her sumo wrestler of a security guard. Janet arrived with a couple of acquaintances in tow, one of whom looked like that wee boyfriend of hers Jermaine Dupri. Upon closer inspection, however, we realized that it wasn't him at all.

Janet attracted a couple of photographers and only two reporters who seemed to be interviewing her out of duty rather than interest. This was a serious fashion crowd. They were there for the designs and were only barely distracted by the sight of Miss Jackson.

Later on in the day, we were waiting for the Jean Paul Gaultier show to begin. (We tend to do a lot of waiting. Today, we waited an hour for some shows to begin and when they finally started they were only about 15 minutes long. We suspect we've spent a total of two years waiting for fashion shows to start.) Janet attended the Gaultier show, too. But there was a different breed of photographers in there. She was swarmed like prey before the show and the same photographers returned at the end of it. One of the Gaultier reps pleaded to her muscle: Get her out of here!

Gaultier is celebrating 30 years in business and to mark the occasion he's having a big bash on Saturday night. After seeing John Legend, Prince and Rufus Wainwright on this trip, we are now feeling so incredibly jaded that we can barely stand ourselves and Gaultier is going to have to pull Madonna out of his hat before we're impressed with his party.

We saw the Christian Dior show today, which we will tell you about in great detail in the coming days. After the show, however, we ran into a lovely Swiss woman who is a regular on the fashion circuit but we have no idea what her name is. She introduced us to her husband and then proceeded to ask what we thought of the show. We made a face akin to a grimace and shook our head in exasperation. "Didn't like it," we said. Our Swiss friend looked disappointed and about 30 seconds later said, "My husband was responsible for all the fabric and embroidery." Apparently, he runs a fabric house. Desperately back-pedallng and trying to clean up our faux pas, we said, "Well, the embroidery was lovely." We're such liars! The embroidery was awful but we hate to be mean.

By Robin Givhan |  October 3, 2006; 4:52 PM ET Paris
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