Fashion has outgrown the catwalk show. Now that the industry is a worldwide entertainment business, with celebrity-packed audiences and global-reach livestreamed collections, beautiful women wearing beautiful clothes is simply no longer enough to satisfy the audience. Louis Vuitton once again raised the bar on the 21st-century phenomenon of the fashion spectacular. Guests arriving at the marquee erected in one of the larger courtyards of the Louvre found themselves in a lifesize facsimile of a train station, complete with ornately arching ironwork and a giant station clock. As the clock struck 10, steam began to emerge from behind the black gates at the far end of the catwalk, a false floor was pulled back to reveal train tracks, and the Louis Vuitton express – a handsome one-carriage train liveried in navy and gold, built especially for the show – pulled into the “station”. An elegant, all-female cast of travellers, who could be seen through the train windows, descended on to the station one by one, each accompanied by a uniformed, white-gloved porter carrying her handbag and luggage. The Guardian
