Paris Fashion Week is an apparel trade show held semi-annually in Paris, France with Spring / Summer and Autumn / Winter events held each year. Dates are determined by the French Fashion Federation. Currently, Fashion Week is held in the Carrousel du Louvre, as well as at various other venues throughout the city.
Paris Fashion Week is part of the Big 4 fashion weeks internationally, the others being London Fashion Week, Milan Fashion Week and New York Fashion Week. The schedule begins with New York, followed by London, and then Milan, and ending the events in Paris.
In 2013, Paris Fashion Week (Fall / Winter season) starts February 26 with Moon Young Hee, and will be followed by shows from major fashion houses such as Louis Vuitton, Comme des Garçons, Christian Dior, Balenciaga, and more. These runway shows are held to show the fashion industry what the various labels will be releasing and to increase sales for the brands. The best models are featured in the shows, and catwalks must be perfected for them.
In addition to Ready to Wear shows, there are Men's and Haute Couture shows, which are held semiannually for the Spring/Summer and Autumn/Winter seasons.
Famous quotes containing the words paris, fashion and/or week:
“The best of America drifts to Paris. The American in Paris is the best American. It is more fun for an intelligent person to live in an intelligent country. France has the only two things toward which we drift as we grow older—intelligence and good manners.”
—F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940)
“Fashion is the most intense expression of the phenomenon of neomania, which has grown ever since the birth of capitalism. Neomania assumes that purchasing the new is the same as acquiring value.... If the purchase of a new garment coincides with the wearing out of an old one, then obviously there is no fashion. If a garment is worn beyond the moment of its natural replacement, there is pauperization. Fashion flourishes on surplus, when someone buys more than he or she needs.”
—Stephen Bayley (b. 1951)
“And although he had given himself a week to do it in and had told the landlady that he had finally decided to leave on Saturday, Ganin felt that neither this week not the next would change anything. Meanwhile nostalgia in reverse, the longing for yet another strange land, grew especially strong in spring.”
—Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977)