Gay Paree!

Paris is one of my favorite cities, but Paris during Fashion Week is EVERYTHING! For the entire time we were there, I could not believe what I was seeing. I knew it was going to be an experience I would remember for the rest of my life. Just being in Paris with Rachel was amazing, but having the opportunity to go to see the shows with her was incredible. That week we saw Stella McCartney, YSL, Giambattista Valli, John Galliano, Ungaro, Louis Vuitton, Valentino, Miu Miu and of course Chanel. Each show you walk into has its own ambience - it's very theatrical. At Ungaro the room was pink and had chandeliers hung all over the runway, Galliano was at an abandoned warehouse outside of the city center. It was freezing cold and dark and then the show started and this green tunnel of light appeared and snow began to fall. It was incredible! Then there are the clothes - Stella featured a lot of lace, Chanel had amazing knits (leg warmers, arm warmers, bodysuits) and jade jewelry, Louis Vuitton had lace, frills, ruffles and brocade thigh highs!

Rachel and I had the most amazing time together. She showed me the value of shopping vintage and we did a little damage together at Didier Ludot. We were in there for almost three hours pouring over everything. That shop is a goldmine and Didier is one of the sweetest men I have ever met and his dogs were sooo cute. They made me miss Jasper! I walked out of there with a vintage cream leather Dior trench. I love it. We also went to Scarlet, which is a vintage store that specializes in vintage Hermes and Chanel, and I bought an amazing Chanel briefcase from the early 1990s. Rachel also found a gift for Taylor here - a vintage red crocodile Hermes cuff. Between our shopping excursions, shows, fantastic dinners and a little dancing, it was a trip I will never forget and I am so glad to have been there with her.

I knew that this trip was not going to be drama free. We were doing a big ad job and the clients were not happy with the selections we had sent them. What you don't see on this episode is that I was spending most of my nights into the wee hours sending images of dresses that fit the description of what they were looking for, but with every batch I sent they wanted to see more. Then the selection of dresses we had in LA turned out not to be in the direction they wanted to go in, so we needed to get more. Luckily Erin Featherston was in NY with her entire collection and I went to her suite to pull the perfect party dresses. She really helped save the day. In the US, Taylor was also getting more options. What actually ended up happening is while Taylor hustled dresses, I had a seamstress make sketches of dresses that fit the criteria of the client, they were sent to the client, approved, fabric swatches selected and approved and then the dresses were made and ultimately used in the campaign. Conflict - resolution! It was a major international team effort ... that's for sure.

I felt really bad that Taylor wasn't with us in Paris because literally the entire team (including Marisa and Joey) had been uprooted to Paris. I am still super grateful to her for letting me go in her place. There was definitely a void without her there - she would've had fun ... in her way. We were really looking forward to spending the time together outside of our spots at the glass table in the studio.