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ES Magazine's spies at the couture shows in Paris report that the atmosphere is "febrile" and that new clients are jostling with each other for the best seats. This arcane world where a dress can cost upwards of £200,000 is flourishing amid global financial turmoil.
Dior designer John Galliano (raised in Peckham) produced a colourful show accompanied by songs courtesy of Carla Bruni-Sarkozy and said: "It's our job to make people dream." His sales are up 35 per cent on last year. Chanel unveiled a beautiful black and white collection - it is also said to be up 20 per cent - and, canny as ever, introduced a capsule collection called Paris-Moscow consisting of encrusted Fabergé-style bags and embroidered jackets and white fur capes. Armani channelled another emerging superpower, producing a collection inspired by 1930s Shanghai.
If you want to see how the tectonic plates of the economy are moving, you can do worse than watch the couture front row. Gone are most of the Americans (the oil widows, the social X-rays and the New York blondes), although the odd female Silicon Valley star remains. Instead we have Eastern money: from Russia, China, the Middle East and, most recently, India.
The French grande dames and Euro princesses who used to decorate the YSL show have all but disappeared. In their place are Indian women in Western dress complete with daughters, sables, chinchilla, minks, diamonds, emeralds and sapphires. They lunch en masse in the courtyard of the Hotel Costes and stay at the gilded Meurice or Plaza Athenee. "I saw a typical newcomer buying a paper in the Rue de Rivoli," said my spy, "in Converse All-stars, jeans, a full-length lynx coat and diamonds."
Not content with buying up half of London - the Shard of Glass, the US Embassy, Barclay's Bank - the Middle Easterners are also flashing the cash in Paris. Stealth wealth is not such a concern for those who live in the middle of the desert. Even one of our own, designer of high-octane evening dresses Julien Macdonald, is now planning to open a flagship store in Mayfair, as business is strong among London's ex-pats.
Those hedge-fund friends of Madoff are so last year. Fashion moves with the times; and the times are moving East.
* Catherine Ostler is editor of ES Magazine.
