putting on the ritz; Camilla Al Fayed steps into the spotlight, William Norwich writes, as more than just your usual 20-something party girl.(Interview)

Byline: William Norwich

It is late midday at the bar at the Ritz in Paris, the international watering hole still par excellence. (Don't anyone panic yet, but we hear that the hotel will soon undergo a major renovation, including some new designs by Jacques Garcia.)

I am just off the plane from New York, enjoying a double espresso. But it isn't the java so elegantly served that lifts my jet-lagged spirits, it is my beautiful 21-year-old "date" for Paris Fashion Week, Camilla Al Fayed, charmingly possessed of wit and poise. Her father, the industrialist Mohamed Al Fayed, as you probably know, owns the Ritz as well as Harrods. A mutual friend helping with the Metropolitan Museum's Costume Institute gala this month, where Camilla is one of the co-chairs of the dance committee, has arranged our Paris encounter.

"So I am meeting the Eloise of the Ritz," I say.

"Oh . . . gawd." Camilla laughs, her jade eyes rolled to great effect.

Camilla has been much in the press lately: Alongside Paris Hilton and the designer Julien Macdonald, she was pelted with a cloud of flour by antifur activists; her grand twenty-first birthday-"Egyptian Dynasty" was the droll theme-came the same week; then the launching of a few thousand paparazzi lights when she was linked, for a few days, with Brandon Davis, formerly attached to Mischa Barton.

With Camilla as one of the jewels in its crown, quite a potent new group, young people mostly in their 20s launched into the public eye