Paris Fashion Week, Seen from an Apartment

During Fashion Week, Paris becomes a stage. Black cars follow one another outside the show venues, photographers wait at the exits, terraces fill with carefully composed silhouettes. Whether you come to work, to buy, to write or simply to watch, those days have a particular intensity. They also call for somewhere to come back to between appointments, and that is what we want to talk about here.

One calendar, several seasons

Parisian fashion runs on an official calendar set by the Fédération de la Haute Couture et de la Mode. It holds several weeks a year: women's ready-to-wear, twice a year; menswear, twice as well; and haute couture, in winter and in summer, with its handmade pieces shown to a few hundred guests.

The dates change each season and are confirmed a few weeks before the event. Around the shows, showrooms, presentations and dinners spill well beyond the official calendar. It is wise to book for a wider window than the show days alone.

The rhythm, however, is regular: menswear shows in January and June, womenswear in late February and early March, then late September and early October, haute couture in January and July. The official calendar is published by the Fédération de la Haute Couture et de la Mode.

The venues that return

Each house chooses its setting, and some places come back season after season. The nave of the Grand Palais, under its glass roof. The Palais de Tokyo and its raw volumes, overlooking the Seine near the Trocadéro. The Tuileries garden and the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, on rue de Rivoli. And, every season, unexpected places the houses reveal at the last minute.

Most of these addresses are on the Right Bank, between the 1st and the 8th, and along the Seine. The rest of the city follows: boutiques open showrooms, restaurants take on the accent of the season.

Where to stay when you come for fashion

The 2nd sits on the edge of fashion Paris: the Tuileries, the Palais-Royal and rue Saint-Honoré to the south, the Opéra and the department stores to the north. You can move from a morning presentation to lunch, to a showroom in the afternoon, and come home to change before dinner.

In the Upper Marais, Fashion Week is lived on the designers' side: independent boutiques, concept stores, showrooms set up in the neighbourhood's former workshops. It is the other face of the week, freer, closer to what is being prepared.

In the 6th, Saint-Germain-des-Prés and its cafés are where the week carries on into the weekend, in a more relaxed mood.

The apartment as dressing room and backstage

During Fashion Week, you change several times a day. You need room to hang outfits, a mirror, light, sometimes an iron or a washing machine for the unexpected. You also need a living room to receive a stylist or a buyer, and a table to finish a day's work.

That is the whole point of an apartment: it is dressing room and refuge at once. Our apartments have two to four bedrooms, are air-conditioned and have an equipped kitchen; they suit a small team as well as a stay alone.

A few markers

• · Walk first. The streets around the shows are saturated; on foot or by metro, you arrive more surely.
• · A driver in the evening. To move between dinners, a transfer arranged in advance changes the night. Our concierge takes care of it.
• · A table booked early. Restaurants near the shows are taken by storm; ask us for your tables before you arrive.

To choose your neighbourhood, see the collection and our guide to luxury shopping in Paris.

The ACT 3 Team