PARIS — “The show must go on!” is a cliché as a rallying cry, but it was unusually apt this month as the fall 2015 men’s runway shows bore their durable way through the appointed cities on their round: First London, then Florence, then Milan and now Paris.
On Jan. 7, the armed gunmen Saïd and Chérif Kouachi entered the offices of the satirical weekly newspaper Charlie Hebdo in Paris, killing 12; on Jan. 9, a related attack by Amedy Coulibaly, an associate of the Kouachis, including a hostage-taking at a kosher grocery, brought the death toll to 17. That day, as scheduled, the men’s season began in London. The shows that must go on went on.
The mood here in Paris now is one of quiet resilience bordering, it seems, on the blasé. Though military officers with cartoon-size guns can be seen in certain streets, the police presence does not feel pronounced. To an outside observer (albeit a regular visitor), things seem much as they’ve ever been. The quais of central Paris are quiet, though undercover police officers, one local suggested, can sometimes be glimpsed. In the courtyard of the Louvre, lovebird pairs of moony tourists nuzzle as they nuzzled before.
–
He sounded, even in the face of the shrugging return to the norm, a note of hope.
“It’s not civil war, but it’s been going on for years, this tense situation,” he said. “I think it’s probably something that woke the people. I hope it’s going to be positive at the end.”
