Fashion's frenetic season wraps up in Paris

Paris

AFTER four weeks, four countries and hundreds of shows; after protests in Italy and the Olympics and the Oscars; after the emergence of the 1980s and shirtdresses and silver foil and argyle and ponchos as the ubiquitous trends; on the eve of International Women's Day (which is either a cosmic coincidence or fate, depending on your point of view), the fashion season finally came to end in the Lefuel courtyard of the Louvre.

The internal square was built between 1854 and 1857, when it was used primarily as a passage for horses, and it had never been open to the public. But Louis Vuitton has a long-standing relationship with the museum, and it needed a big, open space for the show. So on Wednesday the fashion world stumbled on what looked like the landing pad for a giant intergalactic spaceship at the end of the ramps that once led the animals into the stables. Now, they were a runway, down which came a parade of Starship Troopers in vestiges of the outfits of the French female bourgeoisie.