Paris recovers its poise and purpose

The truly, madly (and deeply mad) hardcore fans never cared much for the story in the first place. Nothing should get in the way of a beautiful fashion moment, they argued in their little cyber cabals. If you knew John like they knew John, they lamented, you’d know he didn’t mean the Nazi stuff.

The trouble for Dior — and even more so for Galliano’s own beleaguered label — is that 99.9 per cent of fashion consumers don’t know John and so all they have to go on is that little speech about Hitler and ugly women’s faces, and it’s not pretty. Nor was the swastika that was briefly affixed to the window of Galliano’s (deserted) Paris store on the Faubourg Saint-Honoré. And you thought BP had PR troubles.

Giorgio Armani said that he felt sorry for Galliano being filmed. Damn those cameras ... Karl Lagerfeld said that he was furious with Galliano for living down to the stereotypes that many people have about fashion. “This image is around the world. It’s a horrible image of fashion because they think that every designer and everything in fashion is like this.”

But enough politics. It did in the heads of many people, buyers and editors alike, who just want to create stores and magazines that seduce with a sense of glamour and luxury and to get on with the job of finding clothes that will make their customers/readers look and feel more beautiful/sexy/intelligent/cool/rich/successful. For a while, next winter looked quite promising, even though no show in Paris was strong enough to eclipse The Scandal.

The longer skirt, which has been kicking around for a couple of seasons, was embraced by designers in New York and London, slightly kicked into the long grass in Milan, only to be brought back by the French, who know a potentially demure-sexy trend when they see one.

With longer lengths comes a slew of frenzied spending opportunities. What jacket works with a midi? Which coat? After carefully consulting my almanac I may have the answers. But please do bear in mind they are still works in progress. Hemlines can go up and down according to how retailers think they’ll sell; terms and conditions apply.

First up, jackets. Some proposed a long, mannish version, belted. This looked terrific — on 6ft models. The rest of us may find a slim fitted jacket that’s cropped somewhere around the hip bone more flattering. Or we might want to go the jumper route. Polo necks are back. Personally, I hate every last, strangulating, get-me-out-of-here-I’m-not-Audrey-Hepburn-nor-do-I-have-her-swan-neck one of them. But don’t let me stop you having a beatnik phase. There will be lots of other knitwear choices — chief among them, slender argyles and cable knits, plus anything else that evokes 1960s skiwear. Yes, leggings return, but this time in the guise of ski pants, as worn in the first scenes of Charade. Audrey, how long must you, your swan neck, your impossible elegance and no-carbs-please-I’m-a-Hollywood-legend go on haunting us?

Where was I? Oh yes, coats. Can you really face an ankle-sweeper to match your new midi? Me neither. Not that there weren’t some stunners on the catwalk. But on the No 6 to Kilburn bus station? Let’s wait and see. Meanwhile, there is a crazee theory doing the rounds of the Times fashion desk, that the bomber could do a Lazarus.There were many: padded, quilted, felted and with more tufting than an entire childhood of Sesame Street watching. Proportionally, they work with long skirts, so keep a broad mind.

Where there is tufting and texture, furry sleeves and self-important lapels, outsize proportions cannot be far behind. Sure enough, from Stella McCartney to Junya Watanabe, there was flirtation with, and in some cases, outright surrender to, the giant jacket. It didn’t always convince. McCartney’s looked too big, not so much your well cut Boyfriend Jacket more not-that-flattering-on-you Boyfriend’s Jacket.

Back on the front row and even on the streets, the trends being embraced by (more or less) real people are colour, bright lipstick and — joy of joy — hats . . . but even while I tap away about clothes, my mind wanders back to that scene outside the Dior show when seemingly the world’s news crews took time out from Libya to ask the ladies with big sunglasses and teeny waists how they would cope without Galliano. WIth a considerable sense of aggrieved sacrifice it transpired . . . Dior will survive. That brand is bigger than any designer. But Galliano’s own label is in a more precarious position.

Fashion has weathered many scandals, from Kate’s coke to size zero, but there were set-piece answers to those issues and none to this one. Instead there was a torrent of second by second coverage, the like of which, in the sedate old days of Gianni Versace’s murder, simply didn’t exist. As the twitterati’s attention span flitted to the matter of who would succeed Galliano at Dior, the more pertinent question was, perhaps, who would want to?

Not long ago that would have seemed ridiculous: the swankiest job at the swankiest house in the swankiest city in fashiondom. But if this month has taught us anything, it’s that at the big houses, designers these days are being placed under pressure that is, for some of them, proving untenable. Consider the form so far: Marc Jacobs’s trips to rehab, Galliano’s meltdown, Balmain’s Christophe Decarnin (the hot ticket of 2008-09) and his alleged breakdown . . . I could continue about the fragile, haunted-looking designers I saw backstage last week but wouldn’t wish to pile more problems on to them.

Suffice to say, for years the fashion industry was in thrall to rock stars and now, God help them, they have, in some ways, become rock stars. For second-album syndrome, make that third-or-fourth-catwalk-show syndrome. Trade the constant touring for the 14 or 16 collections, and promotional work, they have to turn out. For invasion of privacy you have the instant opinions of the bloggers and tweeters and non-stop filming (yes, Mr Armani, I concede you have part of a point). It seems a hell of a lot to ask in the name of selling lipstick and perfume.

At Michael Kors’s 30th anniversary dinner at the American Ambassador’s residence in Paris last week I trotted to the front of the makeshift stage to watch the intimate cabaret. I know, it’s infantile, what can I say? I have danced many times to Mary J. Blige, but I have never before had the chance to dance with her. Damn. I should be tweeting this, I thought, as everyone else filmed themselves getting down with Mary J. But if I went back for my phone, I’d never get through to the front again. So I did something unprecedented. I watched Mary J. with my naked eye. Old-fashioned, disorientating — and strangely enjoyable.