Bonjour, Paris.

Byline: Anna Wintour

This month, Patrick Demarchelier is honored with a retrospective of his work at the Petit Palais museum in Paris. It's a sign of his extraordinary standing in the world of photography, and nobody is more delighted than myself and my colleagues at VOGUE. Patrick has been shooting for this magazine, on and off, since the eighties. I first met him in the seventies, when he was far too famous for me to actually speak to. He was part of a group of dashing and (to Anglophone ears) largely incomprehensible French photographers who seemed to have the world, and in particular the female world, at their feet. Every woman looks more beautiful, and more like herself, through Demarchelier's lens. He never lets the picture trump its subject. This is why even the most particular of celebrities are only too happy to sit for him--this and Patrick's legendary kindness and patience.

In this issue, we wanted to celebrate Patrick Demarchelier with a Gallic shoot, and so he and Grace Coddington have given us Natalia Vodianova in the loveliest directional looks from the haute couture, together with the petits mains who staff the ateliers of Dior, Givenchy, Chanel, Christian Lacroix, and Gaultier. It's entirely in keeping with Demarchelier's democratic eye and spirit that he should focus with as much intensity and care on the seamstresses and behind-the-scenesters whose very special skills, passed down through generations, keep alive this rarefied form of dressmaking. As we learn in Hamish Bowles's "Handmade's Tale," each ...