While in Paris last week, one couldn't escape the large posters at news kiosques across the city featuring the current edition of L'Express magazine with French culture minister Frédéric Mitterrand on the cover striking a pensive pose accompanied by a bold yellow title asking "Mais où est passé Mitterrand?" (Where has Mitterrand gone?). Clearly, L'Express journalists haven't been following the haute couture shows very closely for right there at Christian Dior's show, conspicuously seated in the front row amidst the usual coterie of celebrities, sat Mitterrand.
I find it rather ironic that L'Express would choose to run this cover story during the haute couture collections. Who could forget Mitterrand's exhalted promise last July "to not remain inactive" in those last days when the future of Christian Lacroix's couture house hung by a thread as did the livlihood of dozens of petites mains (among the last in France). That promise to help find a solution to preserve Lacroix's couture house was never fulfilled and has been largely forgotten. What I want to know is where precisely were you Monsieur le Ministre while yet another piece of France's cultural patrimony was allowed to wither and die?
Sincerely,
The Luxe Chronicles
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