After kissing Alexandra from Bronzette goodbye, I wandered down the street from Colette to the infamous Café Ruc – infamous mostly for the surly service it has to be said! I was meeting SJ and Caroline from Anya Hindmarch for a drink. There were some other familiar faces around from London and New York, including Be from divine designer accessories duo Be&D, jewellery designer extrordinaire Phillipa Holland and Lainey Sheridan-Young, the fashion maven behind Madonna’s favourite casualwear label, Hari. We ended up taking a series of terrace tables together and sharing a couple of bottles of wine. It turns out that it’s against the Café Ruc rules to sit at a terrace table without eating, but the service was so slow that we were packing up to leave by the time the staff  even got around to bringing any food menus!

SJ and I decided to try our luck at getting a table at the 1st arrondissement branch of Au Coin des Gourmets, the Left Bank Cambodian restaurant where I had spotted French Vogue editor-in-chief Carine Roitfeld on my last visit to Paris. Wandering back along the Rue St Honoré, we bumped into Giuseppe and Tara from Anya Hindmarch and invited them along. Our luck was in and we got the last table downstairs. I knew from my previous visit to recommend the delicious Amok Indochinois dish of marinated fish cooked and presented in a banana leaf, which was a big hit with the Anya crew. We were all exhausted after a long day in Paris and had gone our separate, weary ways by 11.30pm.

Just as I climbed into bed, Tara Matthews texted to invite me to the Alexander McQueen show after party at Black Calavados, but not even that invitation could drag me away from my comfy pillow!!

[Image via flickr.com]

Yes, we know we have more or less blatantly copied the title of an episode of Sex and the City for this post, but Carrie Bradshaw does not have a monopoly on unexpected fashion editor sightings!

After the frenzied atmosphere of the shows, we felt really in the mood for a lazy lunch a la Parisienne. One of our favourite swimwear designers, Tara Matthews was also in town, taking a well-deserved break from designing her own Spring/Summer 09 collection at her beach-front studio in Corsica. When she invited us to her favourite Indochinese restaurant on Rue Dante in the 5th, we were there in a New York minute!

Au Coin des Gourmets was virtually empty by the time we got there for our late lunch. Only the table next to ours was occupied – by none other than Carine Roitfeld, editor in chief of French Vogue and one of our favourite fashionistas of all time. Needless to say, Carine was looking impossibly chic, even for a quiet Sunday lunch en famille !! She was dressed all in black, wearing a suitably edgy slim fit leather jacket. And despite her often-quoted total hatred of handbags, we did spot an expensive-looking python clutch perched on her table! Spotting Carine really made our day.

[Photo by Hedi Slimane via nymag.com]