Paris comes last in the international show cycle, after New York, London and Milan, and that position is the point: it is where the season's reading is settled. Around a hundred shows and presentations are staged across nine days in the Tuileries, the Louvre's Cour Carrée, hôtels particuliers and whatever industrial space a house has taken for the week.
The Fédération de la Haute Couture et de la Mode governs the calendar and decides who may show on it, a gatekeeping function with real commercial weight. Couture week in January and July, and the menswear weeks, run on the same principle with smaller audiences.
There is no public attendance number, and the Fédération does not pretend otherwise: it publishes the count of shows. The audience is invited — buyers, press, clients — and uncounted. We record no figure.
For anyone in the city during the week, the shows themselves are closed, but the street outside the venues is not, and the effect on hotel rates across the 1st, 8th and 16th arrondissements is considerable and worth planning around.
PlanningTwo windows a year — womenswear in late Feb/March and late Sept/Oct — plus separate menswear and couture weeks.