We scurried around to this season’s shows in sub-freezing temperatures wearing Chanel and Louboutin stilettos. No carrying around bags of sensible shoes for us! At night our swollen feet received hot baths. “It was worth it.”

Best show of the season? Christian Lacroix. This was Mr. Lacroix’s 36th season in Haute Couture, and one of his finest. Finally the fashion writers of the New York Times and the International Herald Tribune have stopped harping on his commercial appeal. All in good time, as Mr. Lacroix’s haute couture company has been bought by a Florida based duty-free operation, The Falic Group, and it remains to be seen where this beautiful design house goes from here.

It was a delight to have Fashionlines’ editor at large Margaret Pluvinage to help Timothy Hagy and me cover the shows . We had a marvelous dinner at Joël Robuchon with Margaret’s husband Vincent, and said hello there to Alan and Susan Casden of Los Angeles, in Paris to see the shows. The following night, Vincent took Margaret and me to Drouant, the beautiful old restaurant in the 2nd arrondissement, famous for its hosting of the Prix Goncourt, France’s highest writing award. We dined downstairs, and afterward saw the room on the second floor where the most famous French writers have convened since 1903. Photographic portraits of Jean Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir and others lined the walls. This was a real thrill for me as a writer and the wife of a philosopher.

It was a thrill, too, to introduce Margaret to my old friends on aura tout vu, whose magnificent show we adored. Everyone I knew wanted to get their hands on something from their Spring ’05 collection. Based on a theme I am hopelessly attracted to, semi-precious stones and their meanings, I lusted after the jasper landscape encrusted coat, while Margaret eyed the jade embroidered tunic.

All said, however, it was a good thing Margaret and I were in warm coats on the night we had a little dining adventure on our own. We ended up on the lake of the Bois de Boulogne, which Vincent later mentioned is a “dangerous place”. Unbeknownst to us, the restaurant we picked for the evening, Le Chalet des Iles employs a boat to take you from the shore to the restaurant, a former hunting retreat. As it was snowing and rather chilly, we devoured our curried shrimp and Basmati rice entrees, while realizing that the Chalet des Iles would be the perfect place to take the families on a summer day (it even has a children’s menu). Proof of its appeal is that it was packed on a weeknight in the January snow. We can't vouch for any danger, other than to remind readers that the Bois de Boulogne is where Dior has held its couture shows for the past several seasons.

We had a drink at the Ritz bar with our dear friend Tatiana Sorokko, now a contributing editor at Harper’s Bazaar. Glenda Bailey, editor in chief of Harper’s Bazaar came by to say hi with John Galliano, whom we had last seen from the Dior runway dressed as Napoleon. I couldn’t help but notice that his appearance caused hardly a ripple in the bar. I remember sitting at the Ritz bar during a fashion week back in 1990, and when Claude Montana walked into the room, the excitement at every table was palpable. Times have really changed.

Finally we were put on the alert by our friend, plastic surgeon Olivier Henry de Frahan that Yumi Katsura, the diminutive Japanese designer of one of our favorite shows, will soon be opening her salon in Paris. According to Henry, Miss Katsura commands the same six figures in Japan for her wedding gowns that Mr. Galliano commands in Paris. Times really are changing. This was my 12th Haute Couture season and I savored every moment of it. Who knows where Haute Couture goes from here?