Paris fashion back from the summer break

Fashion started off again on the right foot in Paris with a 4-day "working week-end" at the Porte de Versailles. In terms of salons, the range remains rich and attractive. From 3-7 September, Prêt-à-Porter Paris, Who's Next / Première Classe,

Mode City / Interfilière (Eurovet), Fatex, Eclat de Mode, the footwear and leatherware salon (MIDEC) left professionals in the fashion industry spoilt for choice.

In order to increase traffic, the organisers of these meetings, which align business and pleasure, realise the need to move forward and innovate. In this way, the explosive younger brother of the International Lingerie Salon, Mode City, decided to change dates. In order to be more in harmony with the launch of the season and to precede the key period for purchases in the Northern Hemisphere, Mode City - Interfilière will no longer take place in September, but during July.

"For the July 2011 event, we're going to make our website more interactive, and we have provided for the development of a facebook space and a Twitter profile. The web is an essential communication channel, increasingly exploited by the countries of northern Europe. We hope to make the proposal of the salon more democratic, by adapting the codes of the general public to the professional sector. This naturally happens through a community approach", explains Séverine
Marchesi, General Steward of the Mode City salon.

One of the bastions of Porte de Versailles, which includes almost 1,400 brands, Prêt-à-Porter Paris continues to multiply salon-website interactions. "We keep our salon alive throughout the year through fashion events such as Paris Fashion Days last July and partnerships with bloggers or magazines," explains Muriel Piaser, the director of the salon. PAPP very quickly entered the blogosphere with the creation of http://www.trafficdemode.com/.
A virtual showroom at pretparis.com will also allow visitors to spot new brands at a glance after the salon.
Erika Lauret, manager at The French Factory, a small jewellery and accessories brand, which remains loyal to the PAPP salon, confirms that "without the Internet, there’s no more French Factory! This was the starting point. We have a physical shop, but e-commerce remains the main distribution channel for The French Factory: on-line sales via our e-shop and the sales realised on Winaretta.com represent around 50% of our revenues".

Forward-looking and close to the young generation, Who's Next / Première Classe, the pair of salons which seeks to be a “GPS” of fashion, to guide the purchaser and smooth his/her path, has mastered multi-directional communication. The salon proposal consisted of a "blog service", hosted by three fashion fans for a live decoding of trends; and whosnextrealtime.com – a real-time microblogging site. This January, the site registered more than 200,000 visits. In heading towards free and uninhibited fashion, Who's Next / Première Classe show their its difference and capacity to weave their cloth intelligently, while approaching the new fashion community.

On the day before the launch date for this first round of fashion meetings at Paris Porte de Versailles, the website Boursedutextile.com announced the launch of its on-line clothes salon and a forum for exchanges, intended for professionals in the textile industry. This B2B platform, scheduled for launch on 10 October, will, among other things, allow suppliers and retailers to exchange merchandise through the largest network ever assembled in the clothing industry: 42,000 traders have pre-registered.

Indeed, it is not a question of treading on toes, since the virtual salon proposed by the Bourse du Textile is intended to bring together the entire profession. “In the Internet Age, the on-line salon is called for as the natural and indispensible supplement to the major traditional salons”, the Bourse du Textile urges on its website. To be continued…

From our correspondent in Paris