Imaging Paris: Nuit Blanche

Comments   0   Date Arrow  October 15, 2023 at 6:44am   User  by Mark Willis

Paris fashion on the street during Nuit Blanche, October 2007.
[Photo by Bill Cunningham, NYT]

The Sunday Style section of the New York Times includes a regular feature called “On the Street,” a gallery of candid, “F8 and be there” photos that provide a funky foil to the stylized glamor shots in the surrounding ads. The grainy half-tones in the print newspaper look like smudges to my eye, but the online version offers larger slide show images that withstand scrutiny with my screen magnifier. This week’s “On the Street” features fresh photos from Paris. Here is photographer Bill Cunningham’s blurb:

Near the end of Paris Fashion Week, the city fell under a spell on Oct. 6 as citizens celebrated Nuit Blanche, the annual all-night festival of arts and music. It was warm out, and throngs filled the streets and the Tuileries Gardens, which were illuminated by thousands of fires in flowerpots. A huge candlelit chandelier hung at the Concorde gate. The museums were open and free; actors performed plays from the balcony of the Comédie-Française. Outdoor restaurants, open until dawn, were packed. The festivities coincided with the annual invasion of fashion luminaries in the favorite color of Paris, black. Even Anna Piaggi of Italian Vogue (in the Nike T-shirt), known for her audacious hues, wore it — with a green fox scarf. Carine Roitfeld, the editor of French Vogue, in front of the tricolor, was among the women in square shoulder pads. Shapely jersey dresses were everywhere, and in the cool morning, women broke out their full-skirted coats. And if New York women are into handbags, Parisians are all about shoes, including the Goths, shod in their monkey fur and spikes.

Black was the fashionista’s color on Boulevard Ste. Germain in June, too, even on blistering days when the temperature exceeded 30º Celsius.

Tagged   fashionista · Imaging Paris · VIe · Paris

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