Flanby Flambé

Everyone has by now had a chuckle at the news that Francois Hollande, the newly elected President of France was almost lost to history when his plane was struck by lightning last Tuesday some five hours after his Inauguration. He had barely had time to swallow his valedictory lunch when he was on his way to confer with Angela Merkel, a Valkyrie who appeared before him as Valkyries do appear before warriors when they are about to die. Hollande, aptly nicknamed “Flanby” after a brand of caramel custard pudding (bland, slippery and syrupy) was flying with unseemly haste to meet the Iron Chancellor, thus perhaps inviting the anger of Thor the Thunder God.

Why, one wonders, would he not have waited to have a quiet word with Merkel during the following weekend’s G8? Coupled with his announcement of a German scholar and former teacher as his Prime Minister, does this not seem like bending over backwards to please the Germans? Surely we have been here before?

There is something about this leader that made me enquire, before his election on May 6^th if there were any way by which an elected President could be replaced under the French constitution. Not only due to his plane being struck by lightning.

If a President dies in office the President of the Senate takes charge of the government while new elections are organized.  But, what of unconstitutional methods of replacement?

One evening in April before Round 1 of the Presidential vote, I was returning from a minor late night shopping trip on the Champs Elysées when the most almighty row broke out in the street. Some 100 police cars were jamming the avenue with their sirens blaring, lights flashing. I rode my bike down the pavement and into the park that separates the Champs Elysées from the Avenue Gabriel, where the lush gardens and ornate rear gates of the Elysée Palace, and the American and British Embassies are routinely guarded by uniformed police.

To my surprise, rue Marigny, leading to the rue Faubourg St Honore and the Elysée’s front entrance was also blocked by a line of police cars, lights flashing and sirens screaming. All routes to the Presidential Palace were cut off and surrounded. Sneaking along among the trees without lights, I saw silhouetted uniformed figures carrying guns lined up behind the Elysée’s tall garden gates. Golly, I thought, is this a Coup d’Etat? Even before the first round of the Presidential election, could fears of who might be elected, either the extreme left Mélenchon or the extreme right Le Pen with riots to follow have prompted a ‘leave nothing to chance’ military takeover?

It seems the police were protesting about the prosecution of a colleague for shooting dead a runaway thief, and the Army were guarding the Elysée against the rebel cops. Further down the leafy Avenue Gabriel near Place de La Concorde, the blue vans of the Police National were lined up in case they needed to reinforce the military defenders of the President’s palace.

It was spectacularly alarming. But not perhaps as disquieting an omen as the Biblical style meteorological phenomena in the hours before Hollande’s election, or those that occurred before, during and immediately after his inauguration on May 15^th. The night before the election a torrential three hour storm led to a night of steady rain so that when I walked by the Seine as the election results were announced the following evening, I had to dodge the waves sloshing over the side of the quai. The river had risen three meters and was about to burst its banks. Meanwhile, the celebrants of Hollande’s victory who danced the rest of the evening in the streets around Bastille did so without any sense of foreboding.

Perhaps they were right? I think not. Hollande, or Flanby, the apt nickname by which I prefer to call him, is no Moses. He does not possess the gifts of foresight, eloquence and leadership to guide his country through the coming crises of the European Union. Perhaps Noah would be a more useful President. Flanby’s idea of economic growth is one based on government spending and taxation, shored up by more debt. This loony idea is now spreading. And Obama, King of the Big Spenders is holding Flanby’s limp hand on this whizz of a notion. The torrential rainstorm during the Inauguration and the lightning strike on the flight to Germany seem omens of a future fraught with dangers as yet unknown.  Pie in the sky or fries in the sky: no difference. 

The One Who Got Away!

While François Hollande may be pinching himself to find out if he really is the new President of France, Dominique Strauss Khan must be kicking himself for getting into that scrape in the Sofitel in New York. He would undoubtedly by now be President of France, and there must be many who feel Hollande is a poor substitute for the former Director of the IMF. Others are frankly relieved at the narrow escape thanks to the courage of a hotel maid, since other horrors are now coming to light.

Sarkozy may also be kicking himself for having kicked so many other people during his Presidency and before. But the one man who would have made the best choice yet for the French electors is wondering whether he will have a better chance in five years and preparing the ground now for the future after the legislative elections on June 10^th and 17th.

François Bayrou believes he is destined to be President if France; but to be elected he may have to change his tactics. For the moment however, he remains the one candidate who brought intelligence, truthfulness and statesmanship into a scurrilous campaign in which the two second round candidates scrambled for the votes of the extreme left and the far right, some 30 per cent of all votes cast in the first round. Neither of them sincerely revealed the true state of the French economy to their voters. Neither showed themselves to be capable of solving the great problems of our era. Neither deserved election. For Hollande it was a win by several defaults, the first being DSK’s elimination from the PS leadership contest, the final one being the loathing of many voters for Sarkozy. One must regard him as weakened from the start by the fact that many voted against Sarkozy rather than for Hollande.

Bayrou, is leader of the Centre Party, MoDem. (Democratic Movement). His message during the campaign for Round 1, in which he won some 10 per cent of the poll, after which he was eliminated, was far to close to truthful reality. He was disappointed to have scored fewer votes than in 2007, but having read some of his interviews I wonder if it was because he painted too frightening a picture of the economic road ahead. His Paris meeting attracted more than 6,000 and many more were turned away. Clearly there was enormous interest in a way forward that does not depend upon polarization to the extremes. The extremes, however used simplistic messages such as one would expect in an appeal to class based voters more driven by fear and hatred than by an intelligent interest in solving national problems, and thus pulled voters’ attention away from the rational liberal centrist viewpoint.

Following Round 1, on April 25^th, Bayrou sent a thoughtful letter to the two contestants of Round 2. Its gist was an appeal, on behalf of those 3 million people who had voted for him. He wasn’t looking for a job in government and had already ruled out the idea that he could become Prime Minister whoever won. He appealed to Hollande and Sarkozy “to refuse the resort to violent opinions such as those that are perpetually present in political life, to respect ethnic and cultural differences and accept pluralism, to search for equilibrium.” These views are characteristically liberal but against the trend in which the Front National could gain almost 20 per cent of the poll in Round 1 on a dominant issue of reducing immigration to 3 per cent of its present rate.  In the days following Round 1 Sarkozy increasingly adopted Le Pen’s racialist policies and this was why Bayrou announced that he would cast his Round 2 vote for Hollande.

He is also alarmingly honest about the economic future for France, saying “ I don’t believe that the financial crisis is behind us. On the contrary, I think it is ahead of us and will be very tough.” He added that he believed “the goal of a balanced budget cannot be attained by either Hollande or Sarkozy’s pledges to create growth in the short term. He added a demand for credible measures to avoid the perils ahead including social democracy within companies, and a new contract between schools and the nation to create skills needed for modern society.

His appeal for a moralization of public life went beyond anything expressed by other candidates. Perhaps more than any other of his views, this one is the clue to his own moral and ideological stature, which is far above that of either Hollande or Sarkozy.

“It’s urgent” he wrote. ”This moralization is vital in order that confidence is restored between citizens and the elected.”

In Round 2 the French voters split evenly into two opposing camps --Hollande (52%) Sarkozy (48%). Many voted more against than for either candidate, more against than for a specific future for France: voting on their fears; voting for yesterday’s dreams rather than tomorrow’s realities. Bayrou will have to do a lot of convincing to get them to adhere to his views before the next Presidential. That five years seems too short a time span for a change from Mickey Mouse politics to intelligent choice: unless France goes through a serious crisis during Hollande’s watch. That could be the force majeur that triggers the election of a President who tells them the truth about their prospects in the future world rather than one who indulges their old illusions of a worn out past.

His self appointed mission now is to pull together a confused centre into what he calls an independent pole. He appears to be feeling his way and for good reason. The National Assembly elections on June 10^th and 17^th will decide the representation of the parties in the National Parliament. Sarkozy’s UMP have announced they will field a strong local candidate (Chairman of local hunting and fishing societies) against Bayrou in his Pyrenean constituency where Hollande’s PS are fielding a first timer but have strong support. It could lose him his seat. While that will leave a vacuum in the parliamentary centre, that will not prevent him from pursuing his presidential ambitions from outside the legislature: but it will be a setback for his plan to create a coherent focus for a centrist thrust under the banner “Le Centre Pour La France,”(“The Centre for France.”) In a country so riven by extremist views and inequalities of opportunity, it seems a monumental task. But sometimes all the winds of change need to do their work is a funnel through which to pick up speed and find direction. Monsieur Bayrou, I am watching you.

Dinner at the Crillon

I was passing the Hotel Crillon the other night when I was apprehended by a young journalist. Brandishing a microphone, he asked me if I knew what was going on at the Crillon. I did not. He told me a dinner was being held there and he, a freelance journalist, had watched top politicians, leaders of industry and executives of TV companies go inside.

“ They won't talk to us” he said, indicating a number of others who were hanging around the Crillon’s front door. “What should they talk to you about?” I asked.

We then held a discussion about the election, the aspirations of ordinary French people and the “fixit quick “show of  a “Power Clique.” What were they going to talk about at this dinner?

“Perhaps they are trying to decide the best way to work with Hollande?” he suggested.

“Or try to ensure Sarkozy is reelected?” I ventured.

I told him that it has been my opinion since last autumn that Sarkozy will not be reelected. My correspondent said he thought there was little difference between Sarko and Hollande since both were supporters of the “undemocratic EU government”

I had to agree with him there. However there are a number of other serious differences between the results of continuing with Sarko, or of electing Hollande.

Hollande has a much cooler temperament than Sarko (who can't agree with anyone about anything without hysterics--if at all). Hollande is said to be charming, a bon viveur who has a weight problem and who dyes his hair. He needs a tailor too. His suit jacket buttons at a stretch over his belly, his trousers settle in folds over his shoes. I'm told his speeches are marred by a poor use of the French language. He is certainly no firebrand. It's just as well, we have seen some flashy oratory in the run up to the first poll and that was from Jean-Luc Melenchon the far left candidate. In contrast, Hollande seems someone who will do what everyone wants provided no one else puts too much pressure on him.

As to what he believes? When he looks in the mirror he hopes to see a reflection of François Mitterand looking back at him. My analysis is that he believes in the most convenient way of running the country following the status quo.

He is not a leader. One hopes he is not be quite as dull as he looks, but it would be optimistic to expect much from him. He has had a privileged upbringing and education, is trained as an administrator at the top French establishments, including l’ENA, from which come most of the directors of France’s State controlled companies. Many of them have been dismal failures at their jobs. Take a look at Credit Lyonnaise, Vivendi and other nationalized companies and see how the earnings graph descends to catastrophe. L’ENA boys were running these companies and took big golden parachutes as they collapsed. As I mentioned in my last blog, the Old Etonian Mafia has nothing on this old boy network. It will be interesting to see how many elite ENA buddies get jobs in a Hollande administration and what solutions they will find to change the business culture of France.

Hollande is too lazy to look for original solutions, too unimaginative to consider innovative fiscal reforms to stimulate growth for new enterprises, to, for instance restructure the tax regime that cripples France and her private enterprise. No, he prefers the method of job creation by the State paid for by the middle class taxpayer, usually the salaried executive. As for the rich, they have their tax loopholes and the march of private capital over the French borders into Luxemburg, Monaco, and other cozy havens will continue and even accelerate after Hollande's election.

But Hollande wont be making any sacrifices. He will earn the usual Presidential salary but his security comes from the right wing doctor father who supported Jean-Louis Tixier Vigancour, presidential candidate and a forerunner of Le Pen the father of the present FN leader, Marine Le Pen.

Holland’s mother was a socialist counselor and a social worker by profession who may have had more influence on her son’s political direction. But Hollande and his brother inherited comfortably from his father’s investment in medical clinics and real estate. In actuality Hollande, who is accused of hating the middle class, hating the rich, lives not too modestly in a 3,000€ a month rented apartment with his companion, a French journalist since his official separation in 2007 from his former companion Segolène Royal (Socialist Presidential candidate in 2007) with whom he has four professionally qualified children. He rents another apartment in his constituency and owns a villa in the sought after hillsides above Cannes supposedly worth a modest 800,000€ but probably more since the real estate price inflation for the past two years. His career lacks lustre: he is a lawyer as well as a graduate of prestigious universities; he has held a series of posts in the Parti Socialist, among which his tenure as chargé of mission for  economic affairs at the Elysée after the election of his hero Mitterand, showed some promise as well as the strength of his supporters, Jaques Attali and Jaques Delors. Otherwise, there is nothing to excite. Indeed his CV makes ones eyes glaze over. He is a Deputé (MP) for a department that has more cows than people and where the per head public spending figures for 2010 (the most recent published) are three times the average for any other department in France; he has never held major office except as Mayor of Tulle, a little town in his constituency. Twenty-one years ago I published a biography of John Major, a Prime Minister widely advertised as being "The Grey Man" but who turned out to be marvelously colourful under the camouflage. Perhaps Hollande will surprise us by being found out to have been hiding his colourful side throughout his career as a dull administrator?
If he wins, and I believe he will sneak past the winning post on Sunday, he will be President by default. Many people are voting against Sarkozy in an election where the choice is between the devil you know and someone who may be a steady hand on the wheel, who may still be surprised to find himself in the position of President in Europe's second largest economy. He was a reluctant candidate in this election—the socialists were floored at the ruin of DSK as candidate presumptive-- Martine Aubry said she did not want the job but ran a contest with Hollande to see which of these two mediocrities would draw the short straw of standing against Sarkozy.

As for the latter, you may have to wait until next week for my views on him. And this will probably be, after Sunday’s poll, an obituary.

Avant Moi, Le Déluge

On 12^th April 2000, 12 years ago, I moved to Paris. In advance, I came to celebrate the Millenium, arriving a day after Cyclone Lothar had devastated parks, gardens and forests within and around the city. Parisians told me how they had seen whole chimneys flying across the sky and how they had huddled in their apartments while the hurricane roared through the streets reaching speeds of 150kph to 260kph at the Eiffel Tower. “Avant Moi, Le Déluge” I thought, paraphrasing De Gaulle’s “Après Moi, Le Déluge.” delivered in Montreal in 1967. The quote originated with Louis XV or his official mistress the Marquise de Pompadour and may have referred to the coming French Revolution. Pompadour might have meant the rush of women that would compete for her place in Louis’ bed after her death. De Gaulle meant that political chaos would overtake France when he left office, which he did on April 28^th 1969. He had already created the Fifth Republic in October 1958, but the chaos he predicted may yet happen following the Presidential elections on April 22^nd and May 6^th 2012.

The first poll establishes the two main contenders who qualify for the 2^nd round. The carve up of votes cast for the remaining candidates happens at the vote two weeks later. At the time of writing it seems likely that François Hollande and Nicolas Sarkozy will be the two contenders in the second poll on May 6^th, a relatively simple polarization between left and right. But the real polarization will be demonstrated in Round 1: opinion polls show double figure support for Marine Le Pen and her Front National on the extreme right, and Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s Front de Gauche on the extreme left. As the latter is now running 3^rd in the polls he may damage Hollande’s chances in Round 1 and oblige him to negotiate before Round 2. Le Pen, running 4^th can eat into Sarkozy’s vote but is unlikely to be offered a government post in a Sarkozy administration.

The centre candidate Bayrou is now running fifth. His speeches and interview texts show intelligent solutions on French economics but make no secret of the grim reality ahead: his candour may even be frightening voters away. A socialist win can only reverse gains made for business under Sarkozy. Mélenchon would lower the retirement age to 60 and reinstate the 35 hour week, taxing salaries of over 360,000€ a year for top executives at 100%. No wonder Hollande looks frightened as he desperately tours poorer suburbs trying to convince abstainers to vote for him: he doesn’t believe he can win alone. That means a deal with the extreme Mélenchon and, Le Déluge.

Sarkozy has the smug air of one preaching to the converted. But he will also certainly be obliged to negotiate after Round 1.

With whom? The Ecologists are weak; but minor parties and ex-Front National voters can add to his margin. Bayrou is his best bet and France’s only hope for the avoidance of Le Déluge some months after a Hollande/Melechon win when their short sighted policies provoke economic catastrophe. Sarkozy could offer him a major political post (e.g.Prime Minister) in return for his support in Round 2.

The reason Bayrou is the answer to the longer-term problem is that his appeal is to the centre, to the young and upwardly mobile, the new—for France—yuppie class. He is the solution because France has been deeply divided historically since before the Revolution. 
During that Millenium weekend I borrowed the 8^th floor studio of a political science student. His books drew me away from the storm tossed views of Sacre Coeur and the Eiffel Tower. One I could not resist was “La Societé Bloquée.” Written in the Fifties it describes with penetrating candour the impossibility of switching classes in France. Not only class but clique barriers have been insurmountable. One has only to count the number of graduates of the École Nationale d’Administration, who run top state companies to realize that the old boy network in France is as good as any that Eton ever produced. Cliques thrive because one cannot get anywhere without the right introduction. People hang out all their lives with their classmates from the lycée and fail to be admitted to other similar groups. One friend (already successful) recently said that he had been told it would be hard for him to progress in Paris since he was not himself from Paris. Another friend (now a multi-millionaire) told me he had to seek his future outside France because he did not have the right family connections. The same applies if one has ambitions be a Metro driver. Contacts are everything but networking is mainly within the clique.

To describe this further would be to write another La Societé Bloquée.  So I’ll stop here and wait for the election results. Power to the centre would be the first ray of hope that France can climb out of its highly institutionalized class war and build a country where success and prosperity are based on talent, merit, ambition and hard work, one looking to a class mobile future rather than a gridlocked past.

The King Is Dead. Long Live the President!

Soon after my move to Paris in April 2000, I was hunting for an apartment.  My agent sent me to see a place on the fifth floor of a building exactly across the street from the Élysée Palace, official residence the President of France. The view south from the apartment terrace took in the whole spread of the Élysée and its gardens. It was so close across the narrow space of rue Faubourg du St Honore that I would have been able to toss an apple or for that matter an explosive, into its forecourt. I have often wondered what would have happened if I had taken the flat. One problem would have been the constant circus of vehicles and police coming and going through the ornate gates and I doubt if I would have felt comfortable eating my petit dejeuner on the terrace, let alone in a bikini, my habit in Montagu Square, weather permitting. Indeed there are rules of etiquette if not laws about that sort of thing in Paris.

In those days the occupant was Jaques Chirac, as decorous a ceremonial President as one could wish for, fulfilling the role of Head of State with some of its lingering monarchic functions, and living at the Élysée with his respectable wife. Small by palatial standards (one only has to look at the Louvre just up the street) the Élysée was not originally a home of kings. It was built as the Hotel d’Evreux for the Compte d’Evreux. Later, Louis XV bought it as a residence for his beloved mistress the Marquise de Pompadour. After Pompadour’s death the house reverted to the crown but changed hands several times and was eventually named the Élysée. Some dodgy years followed: it was confiscated during the Revolution, and some rooms used for gambling. Later Napoleon bought it and from then on it became more and more often the home of the French ruler of the day. 

One of the more amusing stories about it is that, in 1917, an orangutan escaped from a nearby menagerie and tried to haul the wife of the then President, Poincaré into a tree. The next President, Paul Deschanel is said to have taken to climbing the Élysée’s trees during State receptions until he retired due to mental illness. Despite these minor aberrations, the Élysée has been the official residence of the President of the Republic since 1873 and today, the Élysée and the Presidency are jointly a focus of the power and prestige of the Head of State who symbolizes La France, the Nation. It is because of this symbolic significance and the dignity attached to it, that Nicolas Sarkozy is deeply out of favour with many of his countrymen. One reason he may lose the 2012 Presidential Elections is the perceived absence of dignity and respect for the office shown by Sarkozy himself during the previous five years.

Elements of a circus and echoes of the cries of rough Cossacks, who took the house over during their occupation of Paris in 1814, have been evident to the dismay of many who voted Sarkozy into office in 2007. From the earliest days of his Presidency, he has shown a lack of respect for his position as Head of State and for those he meets in the course of his duties. His comment to a journalist at a recent Toulouse press conference, "Qu'est-ce que ce que vous voulez que j'ai à foutre de ce que vous me dites ? Espèce de couillon, va" (‘What the f*** do you want me to have done about what you are telling me? Go, you castrated specimen’ is a rough translation. "Couillon" is a way to say "no balls" but in Southern France, I am told, this is the familiar way you would address anyone of your relatives so it is not necessarily a personal insult. But it’s a vulgarity that does not sit well with Presidential dignity and its streetwise references to the male genitals is typical of the words and style that have put Sarko out of favour with his own supporters. His personal life is another cause.

In 2007, immediately after Nicolas Sarkozy’s arrival at the Élysée, his first embarrassment was his (long expected) divorce from his second wife Cecilia, (who had left him but returned for the elections) and his next was to marry into show business. The mainly pro-Sarko press on the Cecilia divorce was carefully stage-managed but when Nicolas espoused the notorious Carla Bruni, the press went wild with stories about her scandalous past. She then proceeded to turn the Élysée into the set for photo shoots to  revive her former career as a catwalk model. I am told that the marriage was a deal, enabling Sarkozy to have a legitimate bride on his arm at State functions and visits such as those to Windsor Castle, while she would take advantage of her position to promote herself. Blatantly using the Presidency for her self promotion, she cavorted before the media with the help of PR, facial reconstruction and her family money. Thus, the whole style of the Sarkozy Presidency was tinged at the outset with a brashness and vulgarity that offended the conservative political class from which he derives his support.

Disapproval ran deep among Sarkozy’s colleagues. The rift that occurred between Sarkozy and his Prime Minister François Fillon, early in the presidency was due to Mr and Mrs Fillon’s aversion to sharing a dinner table with Sarkozy’s third wife, who says she knows and cares nothing about politics and whose goals and values seem to be far from those of  her husband’s political world.

A political associate of Sarkozy’s told me that the reason for the marriage, was that “Nicolas can’t bear to be alone.”  But Sarko’s obvious love of money and nouveau riche symbols, from gold Rolexes to Gucci Glasses (the Bling Bling) go with his choice of consort and they are seen as distasteful in one who holds office as the elected successor of kings. One observer commented that the role of the Presidency derives from a line stretching back before Francois I, and his Valois and Bourbon successors. Being elected rather than anointed does not diminish the dignity and respect due to the office, rather it may increase it since the elected Head of State also has political  accountability.

Example is the other factor. Sarko’s disrespect for others seems to have spread like a virus. Since Sarkozy’s Presidency began, the general behaviour in France, a country whose elaborate social codes and manners have long been legendary, seems to have deteriorated. Respect towards women has been undermined perhaps thanks to the image of a President’s wife that seems unworthy of respect. But the lack of respect works both ways. Perhaps the fact that one of Sarkozy’s sons recently had to be reprimanded after throwing a missile at one of the Élysée Palace police guards reflects the lack of respect for the Élysée and the symbolic significance of the Presidency that exists behind the scenes in the Sarkozy household.

For these reasons as much as the political ones, the electoral guillotine is more than likely to fall on Sarkozy’s neck.

Paris à la Mode

Temporary pavilions are going up in the Tuileries. All year round, these prefabs are going up in the few open spaces this city affords, and then a few days later being torn down. For now, the reason is the Pret à Porter Fashion Week. We’ve had the Haute Couture shows: they take place in more august settings. For instance, The Ritz swimming pool, a Pompeian styled double height space with a grand staircase at either end which models descend. But the fashion houses and their twice-yearly Collections are only the tip of the fashion iceberg, the show biz end of a hugely profitable industry where perfumes and cosmetics dominate and ‘Collections’ are for hyping Brand. Money is the key and as financial pressures mount on top designers, nervous breakdowns among their executives are not uncommon. When the then Editor of Harpers and Queen some years ago told me, “Fashion people are not like us,” she spoke with grim feeling.

In Pret à Porter the stakes may seem less elevated but high stress is linked to the bottom line. Getting a Collection ready to show the buyers is fraught with delayed delivery dates or production crises. A friend who works for an Haute Couture designer who also has his own Pret à Porter label has been toiling late evenings and weekends since before Christmas. He’s a perfectionist and the limited editions of his latest models must be exact to his cut or done again. He already has a big name and a vast salary in Haute Couture and his future and financial survival as a big name in Ready to Wear depend on maintaining that standard.

When Pret à Porter people flock to Paris twice a year to show or to buy, we cant avoid knowing they are here. The ready to wear mob are more practical and more numerous than their Haute Couture cousins. Many rent space in the pavilions that stretch along the Rue de Rivoli side of the Tuileries Gardens. Some take boutiques. Last autumn I passed a temporary showroom in the Palais Royal’s ‘Galerie Montpensier.’ I heard an English voice in a doorway say, “Oh so you’re showing from here. How clever of you.” Many also show in apartments on the Rue de Rivoli where, suddenly, one can be confronted by an ultra chic figure in a black trouser ensemble, coiffed and made up à la Coco for a Noel Coward play.

Fashion is theatre and fashion people are actors.  Sometimes models are snapped against the backdrop of the Louvre, the Palais Royal or the Tuileries. Last year, I saw a model shivering in a little summer number on stone steps while a snapper snapped. The background was a wall. They could have done the shoot somewhere warmer.

Buyers come more warmly clad. Some of the most fabulous furs I’ve seen, the most stylish and original designs have been on my quartier’s streets during 2011’s cold spring Fashion Week.

Sadly, Parisians no longer play a visible part in fashion. The recession has made it harder for ordinary women to dress well. Also, it’s harder to buy something original. Chains have taken over from the privately owned boutiques that made shopping in Paris a paradise. Globalization and the Euro are to blame. Not only that, but the weather and prevalent styles. Last summer one wearied of podgy little girls in denim shorts waddling along the streets. As the weather chilled, they donned opaque tights with their shorts. The alternative is leggings or jeggin’s. Few wear them with style. When I arrived here, women were enviably able to take jeans or a well cut skirt and accessorize them into seductive chic. Now, that art seems to have been lost except among older women. There is a generation gap in the dress codes but also in the sense of style. French schoolkids have it drummed into them to conform. No one wants to look ‘different’. And prevailing fashions are drab. Business women create a monotonous stream of black on the streets. One friend who lectures in fashion schools, and invariably wears bright colours, complains that “Traveling on the Metro is like going to a funeral.”

If it’s ok for younger women to dress down in torn denims and Ug boots, it’s also ok to get fat. Many French girls are built skinny, but fast food has entered the French diet and too many girls wear skin-tight jeans, leggings or shorts that accentuate their figure faults. It also takes all the sex appeal out of a short skirt when someone is showing all but their anal fissure and wearing it with flat shoes; or worse, clomping along in ultra high platforms like a cowgirl just dismounted from a fat horse. Try walking along behind them!

Is there worse to come? While fashion models have been getting skinnier for decades there is a movement to bring on so called curvaceous models. Think Monroe, Bardot, Sophia Loren, and we might say, yes, why not make curves fashionable again? But, in order to promote the idea, February’s French Elle featured a hefty female on its cover. Yes, hefty, with walloping great thighs and unbalanced proportions. Wearing a navy blue body reminiscent of grandma’s navy gym knickers, she shows a belly bigger than her breasts. English Vogue is to follow in October with plump singer Adele on its cover. She has a great voice but does she have a waist? Many fat as opposed to curvy women don’t. Corsets could become the rage once more! But today’s image is more androgyne, slim hipped, long legged, small breasted. It reflects the changed role of women as providers not nourishers.

I’ve always thought fashion and good figures were about pleasing the eye, but it seems we’ve lost all sense of the beauty of a woman’s shape if the only alternative on offer to the anorexic bodies that lazy photographers and fashion designers find so easy to use in place of coat hangers, is some lumpen lass who makes one wish she would wear a burka—or lay off fries.

My ideal female model is in the Tuileries. She’s a statue of Diana the Huntress: and aesthetically pleasing.  If you visit Paris, take a look at this classical image of female beauty by Louis Auguste Leveque, and imagine her dressed by Saint Laurent. Yves, you should be with us at this hour.

Paris in Love

All over the world St Valentines is a commercial opportunity to sell flowers, chocolates, or saucy undies.   In Paris, love is a round the clock, round the year event. On every corner, and sometimes on one or two specific corners one may see them, the couples who have nowhere else to go-- because both are married, perhaps, or because one is married and the other lives with parents or friends. One can’t avoid seeing them. No matter what weather, they are there, entwined on park benches, welded together on street corners. There is one couple I see each time I approach the doors to my swimming pool. They are, perhaps, sheltering from the cold. But there are others who brave the cold and I see them, legs wrapped around torsos on benches in the Tuileries, kissing deeply while snow flakes fall around them like petals of some blown white virgin rose.

How hard it must be to be lovers who have nowhere to go and no time in which to be together outside their legitimate relationships. And there are increasing numbers of those as separation and divorce becomes more common and easy to obtain (the rate in France has risen to 40% during the past decade) but affordable housing is in short supply. The law caters for it with Gallic efficiency. Children become back packers, spending alternate weeks with father or mother. In one case I know, a father of seven married a mother of three. Thus ten children have to divide their time between two homes: the house of the second marriage is a Grand Central Station for them all. Despite these fearful consequences of such new married love, there is no shortage of bonding between the newly single. More and more couples are however opting to live separately in their own apartments. Will this mean fewer passionate pairs entwined along streets and in parks? Or do the French prefer to share their intimate moments? Paris is exceptional in this. I have lived in many cities but I have never seen this clinging together of couples whose aspect is that of love at the end of the world. However ephemeral their passion, it seems real and intense. Love is now. A stranger can sweep you into his arms on a street corner.

The romantic behaviour of Frenchmen is in their blood and in their mythology. I was having a St Valentines lunch with my French lover who has long displayed his romantic instincts as well as his fervent passion. He buys me underwear so that I now view him as my corsetiere: and he is becoming better and better at choosing the bra styles and remembering the sizes.

Our Valentine lunch was at the Café Ruc, a couple of blocks from my apartment and I was not surprised when he ordered his favourite steak tartar with pommes allumettes. There is something invitingly naughty about stealing your lover’s frites from his dish. Not as naughty as having your knickers stolen if you go off to the loo and he follows you with such intent. My concern is he doesn’t end up at home with my knickers in his pocket.

However, St Valentine's is also important for married couples. I saw some neighbours from my building sitting down to lunch around the time my lover and I were ending our own dejeuner. They are elderly, but sans dout their love is still worthy of celebration. The husband is one of the most handsome men in my quartier. Although white haired and becoming frail, he is clearly a lifelong lady killer. He invariably bows to me as we pass and gives a lingering look from under his brows, a lifetime habit, I feel. His wife, a tiny mouse of a woman who has probably been fighting off attacks from predatory females for decades, never greets me. No wonder they are never apart. As they were shown to their table I was touched at the way M’sieu was gently helping his wife shed her coat and making sure that she was at her ease. He was gallantry and courtesy personified. But he belongs to another generation: and another world of courtesies.

My lover leaped up to pay the bill discreetly, taking his coat and apparently abandoning me, his scarf and his briefcase. I had to follow him with these items. Before pouncing at my nearby apartment, he had to check his Blackberry then switch it off. He had a lot of concentrated passion to get through before getting back to the office.

He had already given me some delightful lingerie, plus black stockings trimmed with red satin bows at their tops and a big box of champagne to keep us going over a number of passionate visits. He is absolutely gorgeous and very, very smart.

A Frenchman can be all a girl really needs. If he’s the right Frenchman. Purrrrrrrrrrrrrr….