Vive La Mode!(Paris fashion shows)(Brief Article)(Statistical Data Included)

What's French for "The show must go on"? Ask the kings and queens of the rag trade. Even as the bombs dropped on Jalalabad last week, fashion's top designers strutted their spring collections in Paris--and they did it with gusto. At Chanel's show, in the bowels of the Louvre, the music blared, "Tonight it's party time!" as 50 models marched down a raised glass runway in floating chiffon ponchos and micro-mini chemises. Alexander McQueen showed toreadors in laced leather pants and beaded jackets, senoritas in cascades of ruffles and lace and even a girl speared like a bull, all against a backdrop of film clips from a bullfight intercut with porn. And John Galliano of Christian Dior, elaborating on the ethnic notes he had trotted out in his July show, sent out models done up like Bedouins in turbans.

It may not have been the queen staying in London during the blitz, but it was fashion's version of a stiff upper lip. "This kind of war has never existed before. It's glob-al and different," Karl Lagerfeld, the designer for Chanel, said backstage. "We have to behave as if nothing has happened, because we don't know what to expect. People want to dress, people want to forget. And our job is to help them do that."

Not everyone approved. "Isn't there enough aggression in the world without models snarling at the audience... stomping out with what looked like cartridge holders attached to their boots?" wrote Suzy Menkes, fashion critic for the International Herald Tribune, of the Dior show. In retaliation, Bernard Arnault, head of the luxury group Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton and owner of Dior, banned Menkes from covering any of his other houses' shows. The message was clear: fashion lives in another world, and don't you ever forget it! (By the end of the week, he had rescinded the ban.)

The Sept. 11 attacks have taken their toll on the luxury industry. Sales of high-end goods have plummeted. Major companies like Gucci and Prada have trimmed their profit forecasts. When the terrorists struck, fashion was in the throes of its New York show season. Instantly, the multibillion-dollar business, like the city itself, came to a halt. But within days designers such as Calvin Klein and Michael Kors began to stage intimate, informal presentations in their Seventh Avenue showrooms for top editors and buyers. They had to let the world know that they were still in business, since these are clothes for six to nine months from now.

London Fashion Week, which follows New York's, was subdued. Nerves were still rattled, and most foreign editors and buyers shunned traveling and stayed home. Two weeks after the attacks, only a handful of leery editors attended the Milan shows. But by the time the Paris shows rolled around, the fashion set had regained its ...