Paris Fashion Week showroom edit: a wardrobe for the 8th arrondissement, from Avenue Montaigne to the last appointment

There are two Paris Fashion Weeks. One is the shows, with their queues and their seating charts and the street photographers outside the Palais de Tokyo. The other is the showrooms, which is where the clothes are actually sold and where most of the Le Privé members who come to Paris in late September and early March spend their days. Showroom week has no front row. It has a diary with appointments at eleven, twelve-thirty, two, three-fifteen and four, in five different buildings, and it has a dinner at nine that was booked two months ago.

Our styling desk works it from the 8th arrondissement because that is where the week is densest. The Plaza Athénée on Avenue Montaigne is the base for a simple reason: Dior, Chanel, Céline, Saint Laurent and Loewe are all on the same avenue, the Pont de l'Alma is at the bottom of the street and the Champs-Élysées is at the top. You can be in a showroom on Rue François 1er in four minutes and in one on Rue Saint-Honoré in a fifteen-minute car. It is the most efficient postcode in the city for this particular kind of week.

The morning: Avenue Montaigne and the golden triangle

The triangle between Avenue Montaigne, Avenue George V and the Champs-Élysées holds more showrooms per block than anywhere else in Paris, and the first appointments of the day are usually here. Morning dressing has to do two things: look considered in a room where the people you are meeting dress for a living, and survive the walk between buildings in whatever the Paris sky decides to do.

The desk's answer is a dress that does not need thinking about. Jacquemus's La Robe Saudade is the one we pack first: a long, fluid column that stands on its own under a coat and does not crease in a car. It photographs well in the courtyard light of an hôtel particulier, which matters more than it used to, and it works at the nine o'clock dinner without a change. Over it, a leather jacket or a cropped wool blazer, never a trench, which every other person in the triangle will be wearing.

The middle of the day: carrying the week

By two in the afternoon you are carrying a line sheet, a laptop, a phone charger, a second phone, a water bottle, a pair of flat shoes and the small gifts that showrooms hand out. The bag has to be large and it has to be soft, because it will sit on the floor of a dozen rooms and be lifted into and out of a dozen cars. A structured tote looks wrong by the third appointment.

Bottega Veneta's Andiamo is the bag the styling desk has settled on. The intrecciato leather carries the weight without sagging, the knot closure is quick to open with one hand and it reads as a decision rather than a default. In a week when everyone is looking at everything, a bag with no logo and a very recognisable weave is the right amount of signal.

If the afternoon takes you across the river, the Rue Saint-Honoré and the Palais-Royal gardens are the usual second cluster, with the Marais a car ride further east. Keep the car for the Marais. Walk everything inside the 1st and the 8th.

Showroom week is the one time in Paris when comfort and polish cannot be traded against each other. You need both, from eleven in the morning until the last car home.

Shoes: the real decision

Every member who has done a Paris showroom week tells us the same thing afterwards. The shoes were the problem. Paris pavements are uneven, courtyards are cobbled, and the lifts in older buildings are small enough that you take the stairs. A heel is fine for the dinner, and only for the dinner.

The desk's daytime recommendation is Prada's Monolith loafer, the chunky-soled version that has quietly become the showroom uniform. The sole takes the cobbles, the shape is formal enough for a room full of buyers and the black leather goes with every single thing in this edit. Pack them in the Andiamo if you insist on arriving in something else, and change in the car. Most members simply wear them all day.

The evening: one dinner, one change

The nine o'clock dinner is the only moment of the day that gets its own outfit. Showroom week dinners happen in the 8th and the 1st for the most part: Le Relais Plaza inside the Plaza Athénée, L'Avenue on the corner of Montaigne and Rue François 1er, Caviar Kaspia on Place de la Madeleine, Loulou in the Musée des Arts Décoratifs. All of them are a short walk or a shorter car from the base, which is the reason the base is where it is.

The change should be fast. Same dress, if it is the Saudade, with the leather jacket swapped for nothing or for a fine knit over the shoulders. Loafers to a pointed pump. Hair down. The whole thing takes ten minutes in the room, and ten minutes is all a showroom week ever gives you.

Packing the edit

Everything on this page fits in one carry-on with room to spare, which is how the Le Privé styling desk travels to Paris and how we suggest members do too. The Paris Farfetch partner boutique can hold pieces for collection on arrival, and the Le Prive Network concierge keeps the showroom addresses, the car company and the restaurant bookings in one place for members who are doing the week for the first time. More from the season on leprive.net and at @leprive.network.

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