French President Invites Designers — Pretty Much All of Them — to Dinner

ALL IN THE FAMILY: With concern about the coronavirus mounting, how to greet people at a fashion dinner? Handshake? Fist bump? Smile with your eyes? Nah. It was kissing and hugging all around at the Élysée Palace on Monday night when French President Emmanuel Macron and his wife Brigitte summoned pretty much every designer in town to a lavish dinner to kick off Paris Fashion Week. Nicolas Ghesquière, Maria Grazia Chiuri, Rick Owens, Pierpaolo Piccioli, Alber Elbaz, Clare Waight Keller, Olivier Rousteing, Simon Porte Jacquemus, Andrew Gn and dozens more milled around the gilded ballroom embracing each other. “We’re one big, dysfunctional family, but still a family,” said Elbaz after Owens, on towering platforms, leaned in for a hug. “No competition. Much respect and admiration.” Balmain’s Olivier Rousteing said there is strength in banding together. “We need to be together and respect each other and help each other because I feel we all live the same struggles,” he said. “For example, I was speaking with some designer friends now and the coronavirus is a real crisis even for fashion and we all are facing it, no matter which brands we are and how much money we have. It’s a fashion crisis, a human crisis and

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