Holding the spotlight

After a decade of radical change, has Paris managed to maintain her hegemony in fashion? This is the question posed at the conclusion of Valerie Steele's Paris Fashion: A Cultural History, which examines the city's long history as a centre of style from the Middle Ages to the present, with particular emphasis on the 19th and early 20th centuries when fashion and Paris were especially synonymous. A distinguished fashion historian, Steele settles on a number of themes such as the dandy, using Baudelaire (both the man and his writings) as her starting point for an exploration of this subject, covering at the same time the rise of black as a masculine colour and the associations between clothes and class. Another chapter, "Proust's World of Fashion" examines specific incidents from A la Recherche for the light they throw on Belle Epoque taste; the moment, for example, when the Duchesse de Guermantes - about to leave for an evening party - is spotted by her husband wearing black shoes with a red dress and is sent back indoors to change them.

In this same section, Steele follows the social progress of Odette de Crecy from courtesan to peerless hostess through her developing taste in matters of dress. There can be no doubt the importance of clothing - both as a symbol and as a literal expression of status - has declined during the second half of this century, a decline mirrored by Paris's own loss of prestige as the premier centre of fashion. Haute couture over the past 20 years has ceased to be a statement of rarefied taste and become primarily an opportunity to spend absurdly large sums of money on fantasy garments. In the mid-1970s, couture was denounced by the New Yorker's fashion critic, Kennedy Fraser, as "a degenerate institution propped up by a sycophantic press". However, despite rising costs and a shrinking client base, as well as regular pronouncements of its imminent demise, couture continues to exist. So too does Paris as the world's most important centre for fashion - even though the French have signally failed to produce a new generation of designers. Instead, the city has turned itself into a catalytic meeting-place for the creatively-minded and the one spot where other interested parties such as journalists and retailers can be sure they will not be disappointed. In 1924, the American Robert Forrest Wilson, perceptively wrote: "It is Paris's ambiance that makes her supreme - her atmosphere," and in the intervening period little has happened to alter that impression. Efforts by New York, London and Milan to challenge the French capital have not failed, but nor have they been as successful as might once have seemed to be the case. If Paris's role has changed, so too has the very nature of fashion - but that subject is somewhat outside Valerie Steele's brief on this occasion. Paris Fashion: A Cultural History is published by Berg, price 14.99 in UK