Paris Fashion Week

Groan. Let us never speak about rugby again (at least until France v Ireland at the Stade de France next spring).

It's Fashion Week here in Paris. Now, although your blogger cuts a suave and well-tailored figure, it's hardly an event to get us excited on the scale of, say, a month-long sports tournament. But then again, neither are we enthusiastic about the imminent release by everyone's favourite over-rated and cantankerously obscure band.

Still, we know that the CLUAS readership are a fashionable bunch, and they expect their Foreign Correspondent (Paris) to report on the rag-and-bone fest going on all around him.

So, having swanned around the centre of Paris this morning, here's what your F.C. (P.) can EXCLUSIVELY report:

• Number of fashion shows attended: zero
• Number of celebs spotted: zero
• Weather: bucketing down
• Number of tall, glamorous models hailing taxis in the middle of the street: loads
• Number of soaked and overweight Irish fans who succeeded in getting a cab this morning: zero
• Origin of metro-seeking rugby-supporting compatriot at Place Saint Michel who (sl-ow-ly) complimented your blogger on "speaking English very well": Cork
• Sartorial event, focus of much admiration on the metro line 1 eastwards (10:15 a.m.): your blogger's cord flares
• Use of 'admiration' in preceding sentence: ironic

This whole fashion show hullabaloo reminds us of Carla Bruni, the Italian-born supermodel who is now forging a new career as a popstar in France.

Her two albums of quiet, acoustic ballads have been big sellers in France and beyond. This year's bland 'No Promises' had her crooning poems by the likes of W.B. Yeats, Emily Dickinson, Christina Rosetti and W.H. Auden.

However, her first record, 'Quelqu'un M'a Dit', was a much better album - a collection of mellow, dreamy folk-pop (in the style of some of Françoise Hardy's early '70s songs) that the CLUAS reviewer at the time called a 'subtle and charismatic record'. Here's the title track:

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