Whether it's haute couture or street chic, France has spent centuries as setting the style for the rest of the world.
The UK and the US are hot on its high heels, say those in the know, but the big French names are still more familiar.
From Jean Paul Gaultier, the French fashion industry's enfant terrible perhaps best known for his range of skirts for men, to Yves St Laurent, the grand master who clothes some of the world's best-dressed 'ladies-who-lunch' - they're all here on the catwalks of Paris.
On Monday night, that catwalk ran down the centre of the grand salon at Le Meridien Montparnasse, scene of the 1997 Flight International Aerospace Industry Awards, as top names of fashion paraded aviation-inspired designs before top names of aerospace.
Who better than Guy Laroche, Lapidus, Angelo Tarlazzi, Paco Rabanne, Herve Leger, Hermes, Nina Ricci, Montana and Pierre Balmain to bring the flavour of Paris to this glittering event?
Fashion, like aerospace, is a multi-billion-dollar business: The industry generates as much income as many a developing country's gross domestic product.
Then there are the reed-thin supermodels, who famously won't get out of bed for a day's work for less than many people's annual salary.
Yet while the world's major fashion shows and sashaying mannequins are the display case for what's hot and what's not, style can be as transient as the passing seasons. It is how the latest looks are interpreted by ordinary people that really counts where it matters - in shop tills worldwide.
For me, there is an indefinable something about the ability of this country's citizens to wear clothes with panache.
Take a walk down the street, here, and I guarantee a fashion show before your very eyes.
Style has filtered down to the French masses in abundance and there are very few nations with such je ne sais quoi.
The best education for arbiters of taste in what to wear and how to wear it is a stroll along any boulevard in Paris. It's as educational as the city's grand musées.
Source: Flight Daily News