SweetDiane,
I'll tell you this story... my incursion into the world of Parisian haute-coûture was a fairly heady experience for me. It was the first time I had to deal with fashion and I was only 20. I had been invited to write about Yves Saint-Laurent summer collection for a Roumanian magazine (« Beau Monde »). I received an invitation, went to Hotel de Crillon (Place de la Concorde) and sat in the front row among some very condescending New York buyers and unbelievably ugly priestess of a certain country's fashion journalism who could, I was assured, make or break any collection. I was amused by such a pretension, for the simple fact that, in Europe, especially in France, no one really cares about she was, who they were and what their tastes were. How shocking they looked, draped in their furs as they were, red-taloned, emaciated to the point of grotesquerie, while all about them graceful exponents of the art of French allure glided silkily around the room and along the catwalk. Oh, les bijoux, la musique , the jewels, the music !... The audience seemed to be mostly composed, to my absorbed eyes, of characters from Proust ; around the doorways couturiers and lovely models clustered... the room, fabulously ornamented with rococco golden chandeliers, was extremely expensively perfumed. It all seemed like a coquettish passé, striving with great charme and delicacy to sustain the traditions of a, well, I admit, greater past. The clothes were so sumptuous, the prices were definitely astronomical, the models were so refined ! I was captive, fascinated, delighted beyond imaginable, especially that in this presentation YSL included the 1998 summer collection blouses whose designs were inspired by Roumanian traditional peasant garments (feminine, of course) (Matisse has some paintings entitled "Blouse roumaine" - it's the same dress) ; the rest was very classic, almost like Givenchy's usual splendid creations.
When, later that night, I told Yves Saint-Laurent I felt like living in Proust, he laughed and told me that Proust was all he read in his entire life ; but out of Proust's 12 volumes oeuvre, he read and re-read and re-re-read only 11, never touching the 12th, always guarded for a special occasion in his life. I suppose that after his retirement in 2002, he finally opened the 12th volume.
So that... in the last years I met YSL, Thierry Mugler (wow ! did you see his "insect-dresses" ?), Karl Lagerfeld and John Galliano ("Christian Dior" 's designer - from him I found out some things that really boosted my ego, but that's another story).
I like (feminine fashion): Lacroix, Mugler, Dior (nowadays a bit too eccentric for me), Givenchy (he ceased to create in 1995), Lagerfeld (always liked him), Balenciaga, Versace.
PS - ...I should start writing my memoires...!