Name: Gala Gonzales
Occupation: Spanish socialite
What she’s wearing:
“I’m wearing a Louis Vuitton top, blazer, shorts and bag, the shoes are from Topshop and the glasses are by Jimmy Choo.”

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Musicians I met out at shows lived comfortably off little and had free health care.  In that panoply of shiny Parisian nightlife, some of my favorite friends were from Mali.  One of them, Mamadou, keeps in touch on FB, he left Paris to run security for a royal family living in Cairo.  I think of my friends this week when I hear news of French troops sent into Mali.

At Peace is the title of the new record from Malian artist Ballaké Sissoko coming out February 5th (Six Degrees Records).  His new record is the second collaboration with French trip hop cellist Vincent Ségal, who has played with Cesaria Evora and Blackalicious.  Sissoko plays the kora, a lute-harp indigenous to Mali and together the two musicians forge a global approach to chamber music that results in a classical style with a fresh edge.  The record also features Malian players on guitar, balafon and ngoni, the African ancestor of the banjo.

Sissoko’s father was a renowned kora player, or griot, and Sissoko has brought the tradition to the world stage playing with blues great Taj Mahal and all across Europe.  At Peace is music actively aimed at healing.  It brings classical genres from Paris and Vienna along with music passed down by master griots of across Mali and weaves them into modern times as musical diplomacy.

Ballake Sissoko performs with Vincent Ségal February 28th at Florence Gould Hall at The French Institute.

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Canadian pop star Justin Bieber ran headlong into trouble on a European promotional tour on Thursday, knocking himself out backstage in Paris and dealing with a crushing crowd in Norway that left some fans injured one day earlier.

Thursday’s incident occurred after the singer fell into a glass wall during an intimate concert in Paris. Bieber told celebrity news website TMZ.com he felt lightheaded but was able to perform his last song before going backstage and passing out for 15 seconds.

TMZ posted an audio clip of its conversation with the pop sensation in which he said doctors told him he suffered a concussion and ordered him to relax. The singer quickly posted on Twitter that he was doing well, joking about the incident and saying “gotta laugh at yourself sometimes.”

The concussion comes one day after Bieber, on a brief tour of major European cities to promote upcoming album “Believe,” was met with a crush of fans before a free concert in Oslo leading to reports of dozens of young girls being injured.

Bieber’s record label, Universal Music, said in a statement to celebrity site E! Online on Thursday that it “regrets strongly that some of those who were Justin concert had a bad experience.”

A label executive said “fortunately no one was seriously injured,” and added that Bieber wanted to return to Norway and perform a future concert there.

Calls and e-mails to Bieber’s representatives were not immediately returned.

Bieber performed a free, six-song concert at the Oslo Opera House on Wednesday that is planned to be featured on his upcoming one-hour NBC television special to be aired next month.

The 18-year-old singer was forced to tweet a safety message ahead of the show after police were unable to control the crowds of fans trying to catch a glimpse of the star.

“for the show to happen u must all listen to the police. we are all concerned for your safety and i want what is best for u. please listen,” Bieber posted to his 22 million Twitter followers on Wednesday.

TMZ said 49 young girls were injured and 14 taken to hospitals, and police came close to declaring a state of emergency in the capital. Those reports could not be immediately confirmed.

This is not the first time Bieber fever has caused crowd control and safety issues. In November 2009, fans stampeded a shopping mall in Long Island, New York ahead of an appearance by the pop star, forcing organizers to cancel the event.

Bieber’s manager was charged with reckless endangerment and criminal nuisance, but the charges were later dropped.

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A photo taken by the paparazzo shows Middleton — the sister-in-law of Prince William — grinning in the passenger seat of a convertible as the driver aims the firearm at the camera. Paris police officials are expected to launch an investigation.

“If the evidence points to her involvement, she will be prosecuted. Anybody involved in the illegal use of a handgun in public is liable to arrest and interrogation,” a source says, adding that if the gun proves to be real, brandishing it in a public place is punishable by up to seven years in prison “for all parties involved.” (Also in the car was Middleton’s friend, fashion mogul Arthur de Soultrait, who sat in the backseat.) If it was a fake gun, the maximum sentence is two years.

Wait. You can get two years in prison for showing off a fake gun in France? And here I?thought their attitudes towards fat people were harsh.

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1. Miu Miu

Miuccia Prada’s second collection was the polar opposite from the  sweet show she put on for her main line in Milan. Her Miu Miu collection wasn’t as conventionally pretty with models walking down the runway with severe, side-parted hair and challenging red eye makeup. The opening looks were frankly cold in blue and black skirts and tops that looked more autumn/winter than spring/summer. But the second half of the show was lighter and more upbeat with quirky, layered looks that came with A-line skirts, blouses and ruffled capelets in lace and printed cotton. The colors — a mix of red, blue, black, white, neon yellow and beige — breathed more spring-like life into the clothes, too.

2. Paco Rabanne

The press notes said that new creative director Manish Arora wanted to liberate women through their clothes rather than limit them. But the exaggerated lines of his futuristic dresses and skirts were so constricting around the knees that the models could barely walk in them. Arora has a flair for creating beautifully crafted, wearable works of art. But there was too much emphasis on the art and not enough on  wearability in his debut collection for the house.

3. Givenchy

After last season’s vampy sex-kitten looks, Riccardo Tisci’s quieter, romantic clothes for spring looked like a palate-cleanser. He produced tailored jacket and short combos (a definite trend for spring) and trouser suits in the softest pink. They were wearable and practically sweet. Not that the designer completely let go of his dark, subversive side. A series of slinky, mini dresses with strategically placed sheer cut-outs that revealed naked breasts underneath were classic Tisci. Overall, it wasn’t exactly a  collection that established new trends in the way we’ve become used to seeing from Givenchy. But he pushed a few popular ideas forward, such as the peplum, which he remixed by rendering them in asymmetrical shapes and exotic skins.  

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Louis Vuitton
Showing that he has what it takes to fill Galliano’s shoes at Dior, Marc Jacobs created a stellar production to serve as a backdrop for his expertly crafted clothes. Always a directional force, he took a completely different approach to spring after last season’s sexed up vamps and kinky boots. Instead he sent out girly girls dressed in soft  pastel-colored lace confections who posed and preened on a massive merry-go-round.  But these women in shades of lemondrop, cotton candy and baby blue were anything but saccharine, flashing the tiniest decorated briefs under their lady-like coats. The collection seemed to be the exclamation point on the soft and sweet moment that has emerged from Paris with other houses such as Givenchy and Chanel showing subversive takes on staples of feminine dressing.

Valentino
To the uninitiated, Paris Fashion Week can look like a blur of complex clothes that only make sense in fashion magazine editorials.  But the Valentino show was one of those rare moments that can appeal to just about anyone, from the most commercial red carpet lovers to the most advanced level avant-garde types. (Witness the front row, which included mainstream celebrities Jessica Biel and Ciara and insider It girl Alexa Chung.) According to the press notes, designers Grazia Chiuri and Pierpaolo Piccioli wanted to create an “expression of pure aesthetic pleasure.” And in that regard, they succeeded. The collection was all eye candy — 55 pretty looks centered around lace, which was used in knee-length cotton shift dresses; leather, halter neck frocks; billowing button-down blouse and short pairings; and dramatic floor-length gowns.

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Chanel
In what turned out to be the week’s most gorgeous show, Karl Lagerfeld created an ivory, aquatic wonderland complete with a set made up of giant, seashells and coral reef; a live performance from Florence Welch; and most memorably, models dressed in ethereal dresses, suits, separates and swimsuits that looked like shimmering saltwater pearls. Lagerfeld’s collection was a standout moment because of its sheer size. Few designers today can produce such a large collection (a whopping 85 looks) with a singular vision that doesn’t look repetitive and maintains a couture-level quality from beginning to end. Every single piece had a subtle, underwater reference: drop waist dresses with scalloping that resembled scales, trim tweed suits with pearls tracing the waistline, iridescent trousers that brought to mind the smooth interior of an oyster shell, and foam-like chiffon ruffled skirts in frothy pink. It was a universally pretty collection, with a rarefied sensibility. And the excitement in the room was palpable. In short, this is what Paris Fashion Week is meant to be.

Chloé
In many ways, Chloé is a difficult house to take on. It still hasn’t fully recaptured its glory days when Stella McCartney and Phoebe Philo made it the epitome of feminine cool. And even though its most recent creative director, Hannah MacGibbon, put her own clear stamp on the house (it was she who ushered in the Seventies comeback), her work never attracted the same must-have-it-now level of obsession that the brand had going for it before.  Enter Clare Waight Keller, the latest Brit to move into the French house, who debuted her first collection for Chloé on Monday. Her clothes had the breezy femininity the house has become known for in the form of drop waist dresses and soft, chiffon pleats. But she tempered the girly-ness with with cotton t-shirts and button-down blouses that were slightly tomboyish. It was a sweet collection, but it felt more like a quiet arrival than a momentous debut.

Givenchy
After last season’s vampy, sex kittens Riccardo Tisci’s quieter, romantic clothes for spring looked like a palette cleanser. Gone were the black cat graphics, latex and sheer skirts. Instead, he produced tailored jacket and short combos (a definite trend for spring) and trouser suits in the softest pink. They were wearable and practically sweet, a word you don’t normally associate with Givenchy. Not that the designer completely let go of his dark, subversive side. A series of slinky, mini dresses with strategically placed sheer cut-outs that revealed naked breasts underneath were classic Tisci. Overall, it wasn’t exactly a directional collection that established new trends in the way we’ve become used to seeing from Givenchy. But he pushed a few popular ideas forward, such as the peplum, which he remixed by rendering them in asymmetrical shapes and exotic skins. The collection could have done without a series of glittery disco bright dresses and suits, which looked more flash than substance.

Yves Saint Laurent
How do you show a collection in Paris, when you have been dogged by rumors about your job security? For the past few seasons, each of Pilati’s collections have been shown against speculation that his days at Yves Saint Laurent are numbered. But if the stressful circumstances caused internal chaos, it didn’t show on the runway. His sophisticated A-line coat dresses, elegant trouser suits, romantic cocktail dresses and dramatic evening gowns were all beautifully constructed and seemed to pay homage to the history of the house. Pilati’s jewel toned collection was cool and polished, perhaps too much so. Many of the clothes, such as his crisp jacket and skirts that opened the show, came off as cold and clinical in a way that Yves Saint Laurent was never really known for.

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The most unrealistic expectations: Kanye West’s debut

On the one hand, his Paris Fashion Week debut lived up to the unreal amount of hype surrounding it. His small runway show was a painfully exclusive affair with a guest list that read like one giant front row: Anna Wintour, Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen, Alexander Wang, Silvia Fendi, Azzedine Alaïa, Dean and Dan Caten, Olivier Theyskens, Jared Leto, Lindsay Lohan, Ciara, Joseph Altuzarra, Terry Richardson — the list of fashion insiders, power editors and designers goes on and on. West has been clear about his intentions to avoid being typecast. His fashion credibility was loud and clear, but the quality of the clothes on the runway was inconsistent. The collection felt like summer one moment with sexy, dresses in white that had skin-baring cut-outs, and winter the next with heavy fur embellished jackets and thick embroidered tops. His slouchy trousers seemed to hang on the models in unfortunate ways, but an opening leather jacket and skirt looked sleek and edgy. Bottom line, just because a person goes to a lot of fashion shows and spends time with a lot of very important fashion people, doesn’t necessarily mean that he can design a cohesive collection.  That said, Kanye’s soundtrack, which included Waka Flocka Flame and the Fugees, was hands down the best of the week.

The least surprising moment: Isabel Marant’s sporty separates

Marant, in part, helped spark the season’s obsession with all things athletic. (Remember her hugely popular varsity jackets from last year?) This collection featured more of her effortlessly cool French girl fare complete with cotton jerseys, batik skinny jeans and patchworked tees and dresses. But it would be nice to see her evolve out of this look, which has been a huge retail hit but can sometimes seem repetitive. The show’s strongest moments came with the pieces that seemed completely fresh and new for her, such as the opening chunky, multi-colored knits and a series of sheer, delicate lace dresses and tops.

The most weather appropriate dresses: Sonia Rykiel’s airy pieces

Only the house of Sonia Rykiel can make knits look light and breezy. Paris was literally burning hot all weekend long, with editors suffering through stuffy venues that had no air-conditioning. But Rykiel’s pretty, pleated knit dresses; cool, slouchy suits and flirtatious playsuits looked like just the thing to wear in such steamy weather conditions. The collection, which was the first from new creative director April Crichton (Sonia’s former right-hand woman), also included some of the sweeter interpretations of the season’s popular drop waist dress that we’ve seen all week.

The most glam track suit: Lanvin

Alber Elbaz is probably the last person one would expect to reinterpret a track suit, but his slinky version for evening, which featured digital graphics of a serpent coiling its way up the legs and torso was the height of cool. Meanwhile loyalists, will love this season’s version of his trademark shift dress, which had bejeweled three-dimensional snakes winding around the shoulders and neck.

Sexiest collection: Stella McCartney’s leg-loving looks

For spring, Stella McCartney continued the seductive streak she started for fall, only she replaced last season’s body-con, sheer dresses with crisp, A-line dresses and coat dresses that re­vealed miles of leg. They were sporty with a flourish; each look came with contrasting colored swirls that surfed their way along the hemline and up the torso. The visual detail was also used to update her trousers suits, which have by now become a staple in every collection.

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The gossip: In her review of Simons’ stellar Jil Sander show, the International Herald Tribune’s Suzy Menkes hinted that Raf may eventually take over Yves Saint Laurent at some point in time. Jessica Michault, her colleague, reported that news as fact on Twitter, causing many to believe that the change would be happening immediately.

The truth: No, Stefano Pilati is not going anywhere anytime soon. But Suzy Menkes’s article does suggest that Raf Simons could possibly take over one day. When that day will come (next year, or next decade), no one knows. But it sucks for Pilati to have another round of rumors about his job security circulate right before his show.

Marc Jacobs to take over Christian Dior

The gossip: Women’s Wear Daily reported that he and partner Robert Duffy have been haggling with the storied fashion house over salary. And we can’t blame him. His work load will jump majorly when he has to add bi-annual couture collections to his to-do list.

The truth: Only Marc and the parties involved in the negotiations know for sure.

Kanye West to show in Paris

The gossip: After several months of will-he-or-won’t-he rumors, Kanye West will definitely show his first women’s wear collection in Paris. Australian editor Christine Centenera is said to be consulting him, while the major fashion PR firm Karla Otto is handling the press. Word on the street is that he’ll take the Tom Ford approach by making his runway show painfully small and exclusive. We also hear he won’t be allowing anyone to take photos.

The truth: Karla Otto is definitely handling his PR and Christine Centenera is definitely consulting. Unfortunately for you guys, it sounds like the super small exclusive part is true too (we guess this one won’t be live streamed.)

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Always the unofficial kickoff to Paris Fashion Week (meaning the first show on the calendar that really counts), Dries started the ready to wear collections off with timeless, beautifully crafted clothes that, in some ways, represented a departure from his trademark flair for color and print. The patterns were there, but they were quieter than usual and juxtaposed images of nature with digital graphics in a color palette that evoked the outdoors (saffron, forest green, lemon, turquoise, black and white). It was a smart move. The show, set against a stark white backdrop, felt like a calm moment, giving a little peaceful yin to a season dominated by loud, frenetic colored and patterned yang. Standouts included his tailored trousers with ruffled peplums attached to the front and his richly embroidered jackets and coats, which came cropped and boxy, hip-length and cinched at the waist or long and slouchy.

Limi Feu

Was Yohji Yamamoto’s designing daughter having a Janelle Monae moment? It sure looked that way with all the tomboyish, rockabilly flavored black and white looks she showed. Feu worked a lot with volume, going big and slouchy for her dresses and skirts. This is her trademark and it worked well. The pieces read young and fun. But her more elegant silk dresses in leaner silhouettes that came out at the end of the show stood out the most, mainly because they gave some needed diversity to the collection.

Rochas

As far as decades go, the Twenties look to be the most trendy for spring/summer 12. And yet there is a strong mid-century moment happening this season as well. We saw it at Prada and Jil Sander and now at Rochas. According to his press notes, the house’s creative director Marco Zanini wanted to “express a nostalgic hope for an imagined future.” That meant chic, simple A-line coats, skirt suits, and dresses with full skirts in the palest duchess satin. Neat coifs and head kerchiefs polished off the retro looks. The only problem was that they almost looked too prim and restrained for the average twenty- or thirtysomething. The clothes were untouchable and almost cold in a way that seemed out of step with today’s generation, which is always online and accessible thanks to blogging, Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr etc. But maybe that was the point. His lurex sweater and knit skirt pairings, however, struck the right balance between the mid-century and now.

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Kimonos, catsuits, turbans, accessories and more accessories.

What is the one thing in your closet you would save from a fire?
Myself! And my YSL couture.

Trends. Yay or nay??

I?don’t follow rules and I never follow trends.

When it comes to fashion, what bores and excites you most?

Sterility and predictability bore me. Creativity and individuality excite me.

You’re a master at layering. What’s the key to doing this well?

Culture.

What decade do you identify with most and why?

The period between the wars. I loved the details [of the clothing].

How would you define your style?

It’s a mix of the ’20s, ’30s and ’40s with a bit of Disco Blitz mythology. 

If you could trade wardrobes with any woman, past or present, who would you choose and why?

Marie Antoinette for her wardrobe’s abundance and the endless possibilities to play and re-create with her clothes.

Street style bloggers love to photograph you riding your bike in mega-high heels. What’s the trick to doing this without falling down or looking ridiculous?

It’s all in the legs, darling.

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