Fashion Designer Alessandra Vicedomini is Monaco Life’s fashion contributor, keeping readers up to date on all things couture.

Walking around Paris, I can’t help but notice that people wear more black and experiment very little, despite the fact Fashion Week gathers eccentric styles and new trends, along with provocative figures walking around the Champs Elysées and St Honoré.

I worked all day with a New York client on the new collection in a very nice boutique hotel at place de l’Opera Edouard Vii, which I highly recommend. It is brand new and beautifully decorated, with haute couture pictures hanging all over the place.

Afterwards, I took my NY client for dinner at Costes, “the“ establishment with its incredible decor, magical atmosphere, and glamorously dressed waitresses with their short draped tunics and blazer-dress style with see-through lace bras pinned with Swarovski brooches and – rigorously – cow-boy boots.

Their uber-contemporary look contrasts the classic Parisian style: a woman who is perpetually thin, young, artfully disheveled-yet-bougie, donning a Breton top and a vintage Chanel bag and who doesn’t brush her hair. Her only thing is mat red lipstick.

BTW… Chanel’s windows in monocrome sequins were outstanding!