Guest Column: An Event Producer in Paris, Part I

Cara Kleinhaut (@Caravents) is the owner and founder of Caravents, a New York- and Los Angeles-based event design, production, and multimedia firm. Her clients include Target, Condé Nast publications, Twitter, Ambercrombie & Fitch, Elle magazine/Hearst publications, and Yahoo.

It’s Paris Fashion Week once again, the culmination of a solid month of fashion shows, presentations, dinners, parties, and thousands of #OOTD’s (that’s outfits of the day in blogger speak) in New York, London, Milan, and now finally in Paris. I’ve always wanted to check out what PFW was all about, but from my view as an event producer. Yes, yes, any excuse to go back to Paris. But while I’m here, let’s dive in! So who are the main players in the event business here? What are the locations? How are the shows and scene different than New York Fashion Week? Who gets invited and basically what makes Paris Fashion Week tick? Well, this is by no means an exhaustive report, though exhausted is the right word after traversing the Seine 100 times in a day to tour the venues, meet the creatives, and even stay out past bedtime to check out some parties.

Let’s start with the locations. As Paris is basically one big big outdoor history museum, depending whose point of view you share, the venues and monuments themselves can be just as much as a draw as the collections. Spread throughout the center(ish) of Paris, the shows take place in a series of magnificent urban palaces, gardens, and interesting “Hôtel Pariculiers” including: Le Grand Palais, Le Palais de Tokyo, Palais Garnier, Palais des Beaux Arts, and Hôtel Salomon de Rothschild, to name a few. With soaring architecture from the 1800s as the overall set backdrop, it’s hard to not feel like somehow this is a more rarified experience.

As one popular Parisian fashion blogger, Emilie of the Brunette put it: “In Paris, you could have shows in churches, private apartments, gardens, schools. There is possibility everywhere in Paris. but NYC shows are almost always in the same place” and not that interesting of spaces.

And a more exclusive experience it is. Though I have not checked under every tapis rouge (red carpet, that is), we just have not seen the branded presence we see at NYFW. The special viewing and recharge lounges like American Express’s SkyBox Lounge and Target’s Every Day Café just don’t exist. Instead, everyone flocks to the hot cafès in town, Instagrams their lunch—coffee and macarons—and then continues on to the next show. Beauty bars, product sampling, interactive brand experiences, or pop-ups as they once were known, all n’existe pas over here. It’s about nabbing your invite to the show, getting together in smaller groups for breakfasts and lunches, shooting great content for your blog (lots of posing at the Louvre this morning), and then, well, there are the dinners and the parties to go to at night. But you better have an invitation in hand!

There is a big difference in the parties too. Again, we didn’t see any sponsor integrations, even at a magazine-hosted party at the new hot spot in town, Faust, built under the Alexander III bridge. Since dinner is at 9 p.m., parties are late, dark, and discreet. Not exactly Instagram-ready moments! The guys in town to know have a blog called Ten Days in Paris. In their cheeky way, they give the list of all the parties of the week, the locations, and your chances by percentage of getting in if you’re not on the list. While their focus is primarily trying to find hot models, it’s a useful resource if you really want to party hop.

And of course there are the top luxury hotels. With sweeping city views, they serve as home base for the fashionista set, but also host exclusive and private soirees in their terrace view suites, such as Kanye and Kim’s shindig on Wednesday night on a private terrace at the new Peninsula Paris. Private dinners, daytime meetings, and also a show here and there, the hotels serve as command central for PFW out-of-town attendees. There is the classic Grande Dame Le Meurice (just as busy as ever, by the way) to the newest gleaming hotel, kind of the new command central of PFW, the Peninsula Paris.

But if a more urban art scene feels like home to you, something that reminded me a little of the Ace Hotels, is the Hotel Molitor. Once an exclusive private pool club then an abandoned street art rave wasteland, it is now totally refurbished into a contemporary haven fusing street art with popping colors and modern design, and the original pool as the central focus.

As we move deeper into PFW we’re set to visit some talented floral designer’s ateliers (a very pretty word for workshop), Instagram-ready decor being created by some of the newer event design talent, and, of course, there’s Bureau Betak, the king of the event designers here in Paris, working on some of the biggest shows, including Christian Dior, which always stuns with floral walls and elaborate sets. And for the daily moments, fave café’s, and my ridiculous attempt to look like a fashion blogger, you can hop over to everyone’s favorite addiction du jour, Instagram, and say hi @Caravents #CaraventsInParis!

Disclaimer: The views and opinions in this article belong to the author, and do not necessarily represent those of BizBash.