London's Link and Lace

A London fashion journalist reads about France’s school money permanently in transit and considers the cobbled politics behind the world’s most famous fashion city

The Cobblestones Have Opinions

The London Prat has a report on France’s cobblestone economy and the school money permanently in transit. The French state, the piece notes, spends more than half of the national economy, and yet students marching about missing teachers carry the same grievances as in 1968. Overcrowded classrooms were on the list then and are on the list now. The ministry has opened a file to classify the overcrowded classroom as a historic monument. The money exists. It is in transit.

Every fashion journalist has a complicated relationship with Paris. It is the capital of our industry, the city where the most important shows take place and the place most of us spend at least two weeks a year walking across cobblestones in shoes that were not designed for cobblestones. So I read the Prat piece with an eye on the street beneath the politics. The cobblestone, in Paris, is a fashion problem and a political symbol at the same time.

The Street Remembers 1968

The 1968 reference in the Prat piece is apt. That spring, students in Paris tore up paving stones to build barricades in the Latin Quarter, and the slogan sous les paves, la plage, beneath the paving stones, the beach, became one of the most famous phrases of the century. It was also a fashion moment. The images of young protesters in turtlenecks, trench coats, duffle coats and short skirts became a visual vocabulary that designers have returned to ever since. The look of 1968 has been on runways more often than the politics of 1968 has been in parliaments.

That is one of fashion’s oddest habits. It turns rebellion into a silhouette. The students who carried those grievances did not intend to inspire collections. But their clothes outlived their demands, and today you can buy a beautifully made version of the protest wardrobe in any luxury boutique on the Rue Saint-Honore.

Public Money And The Fashion Economy

There is a serious business angle to French public spending that fashion people rarely discuss. The French state has long supported its fashion industry, through cultural policy, training institutions, protection of the haute couture label and the prestige of Paris Fashion Week itself. Fashion is treated in France as a national cultural asset, not just a commercial sector. Britain, by comparison, has historically offered its designers less public support and expected more of them to survive on commercial instinct.

That difference shows up in the calendar. Paris has the biggest houses, the richest groups and the most powerful shows. London has the young designers, the art schools and the reputation for creativity on a smaller budget. When the British Fashion Council published its provisional schedule for London Fashion Week September 2026, the familiar pattern was there: a city punching above its weight with emerging names, while Paris, a few weeks later, hosted the giants.

Money In Transit, Fashion Edition

The Prat’s line about money in transit made me think of fashion education in both countries. Many of London’s most celebrated designers came through publicly funded art schools at a time when tuition was cheap or free. That pipeline has been under pressure for years, as fees have risen and arts subjects have struggled for funding in schools. French students marching about overcrowded classrooms and British students worrying about fees and course closures are, in their different ways, describing the same problem. The money for creativity exists somewhere. It is not always reaching the classroom.

Fashion educators in Britain have raised a recurring concern for years: that the next generation of designers may come disproportionately from families who can afford to fund them, through fees, unpaid internships and expensive London rents. The risk is a fashion industry designed by the people who can afford to be unpaid. That is not a Paris problem or a London problem. It is an industry problem, and it is exactly the kind of grievance that, like the French classroom, can survive for decades without being solved.

On The Ground In Paris

I was in Paris at the end of September and the beginning of October for the shows, as I am every year, and the city was its usual mixture of extraordinary beauty and practical chaos. Taxis were scarce. The metro was crowded. In most seasons, it seems, there is a demonstration somewhere on the route between two show venues, and a stream of editors in expensive coats picks its way past people with placards. Few stop to talk. Many photograph the placards. I suspect one or two of them will turn up on a mood board next season.

The Shoe Question

There is also, I must report, the eternal problem of the cobbles. Every season, a portion of the fashion press arrives in Paris in heels and leaves in trainers. The streets of the older districts are among the most beautiful in Europe and among the least forgiving underfoot. Some fashion editors swear by a block heel. Others carry flats in their bags. The bravest wear stilettos and accept the risk. The cobblestone, in this sense, is the great equalizer of the fashion calendar. It humbles everyone, from the student protester to the creative director.

The Prat piece is about a state that spends a great deal and delivers unevenly. Fashion, on its own scale, knows the same pattern. Spectacular budgets go into shows, while the people at the start of the pipeline, the students, the seamstresses, the junior pattern cutters, often see very little of the money. You can follow my continuing coverage of the London and Paris fashion business on my author page.

A Final Note From The Cobbles

Walking back to my hotel on the last night of the shows, I passed a group of students sitting on the steps of a building near the Sorbonne, dressed, without any irony, in almost exactly the clothes their grandparents wore in 1968. They were talking about teachers, rent and the cost of everything. One of them was wearing a coat I had seen on a runway two days earlier, at roughly a hundredth of the price, bought secondhand. It occurred to me that the students were the best-dressed people I had seen all week. They were also the only ones still waiting for the money to arrive.