At first I didn’t realise it was Fashion Week. In Paris, there are always androgynous men in kilts stalking the boulevards and straggle-haired waifs who’ve forgotten their skirts rushing from one shoot to another, but there did seem to be more men with nose rings and Louis Vuitton city-shorts prancing about than usual. We passed a crowd of black-clad votaries standing in the icy lemon sunshine on the Avenue George V. I asked a photographer what they were waiting for. ‘Le défilé de Givenchy,’ he snapped, as if only a fool could be unaware it was the third day of Menswear Paris Fashion Week Fall/Winter 2024-25. At least he did me the honour of replying in French.

Speaking of straggle-haired waifs, Kate Moss celebrated her 50th here and threw a party at the Ritz. Trooper that she is, she arrived in a sketchy lace dress from New York Vintage and strappy sandals, her only concession to the big freeze being a slippery cape with champagne lining (as the required thermals plus duvet coat would have made for somewhat less wriggly and sparkly paparazzi pics). Kate Moss and Princess Anne (who Fendi has just declared is the inspiration for its menswear fashion range) represent the very best of British and the height of style. If Princess Anne has been called the most elegant woman in the world in her ancient beater’s tweeds and Kate Moss is all about vintage, then what is the actual point of the throwaway fashion industry?

My secret fantasy is to live in Paris – Brexit permitting – so the purpose of my visit was a recce as well as the blockbusting de Staël and Van Gogh shows. I blame Laure de Gramont. For several years she’s been sending me her Paris Diary, which begins charmingly: ‘Here is my morning call to my best friends.’ Thousands have asked to be subscribed as it’s an invaluable insider’s guide to everything from galleries to golf and Laure’s impeccable eye and pen travels way beyond Paris. When I went to have tea with her, she insisted I had to be in the 1er or 2ème arrondissements so I could walk my dog in the Tuileries. Well, if anyone reading this wants to do a house swap, I can offer a peasant farmhouse on Exmoor two miles from Tarmac or a shabby Notting Hill residence. If your Parisian apartment is truly out of this world – and you also have a villa in the south or a chalet in the mountains – I am prepared to make a grand exception. You can have the run of both my properties.

The museum city is polishing itself up in time for the Olympics. The padlocks have been cut off the bridges, the homeless have been removed from doorways, and it’s a race against time to reopen a restored Notre-Dame five years after the fire for the Games. We were in a taxi wheeling around the Place de la Concorde admiring the scenery when my brother-in-law James said: ‘Paris – the city that kept its monuments but lost its soul.’ We hung left over the bridge, skimmed the Musée d’Orsay, the art shop Sennelier with its edibly fat and oily pastels, the boutiques selling man-bags, and then plunged into the Latin Quarter. ‘Paris is a girl sitting in a café,’ said my husband, Ivo, as we crawled down the Rue de Seine to our hotel, La Louisiane. ‘And London is a man in a pub with a pint of beer,’ James added.

We were stunned by the beauty but winded by the prices. I almost wished at Lapérouse that the waiters did that thing of handing the priced menu to the chaps, so I couldn’t see that seasonal vegetables cost €38 and a mesclun salad €28. The most expensive bottle of wine was €27,000, a reminder that the rich are always with us. Over pre-dinner cocktails my friend Fabrice Gaignault, the writer, revealed that there were private rooms at the fabled establishment (where Edward VII, Proust and Colette all dined, if not together). These snuggeries each have tables for two and a chaise longue. ‘And there are still the scratches on the ceiling,’ Fabrice continued over his Moscow Mule in a bronze beaker, ‘where the… women who had just been given diamonds by their admirers were testing the hardness of the stones.’ When I asked him to take me to one of these bordels – to examine the ceiling! – all the private rooms were occupied. Well, they do call Paris the City of Love.