Carine Roitfeld, the editor of French Vogue, was saying, before the magazine's private dinner at the Plaza Athénée on Thursday evening, that the strongest trend of the season was ''vintage vintage vintage, and it's a bit sad in a way, but maybe people like to feel reassured.''

And Camilla Nickerson, the stylist with the hollowed cheeks of a Dickensian orphan, was saying, before the Lagerfeld Gallery show that same morning, that ''life can get so surreal.'' One could be forgiven for inferring that Ms. Nickerson was underscoring a point, and not a subtle one, made by the procession of models who wore feminized versions of the clothes Karl Lagerfeld himself habitually favors: shirts with exaggerated high collars, nipped blazers and even a T-shirt with the legend 4SlimPeople, lest anyone forget that the designer had dieted off a third of his body weight.

And Dodie Rosekrans, the durable San Francisco socialite and heiress, was saying, as a younger gentleman piloted her around the Viktor & Rolf retrospective at the Musée de la Mode et du Textile, that what first attracted her to Viktor Horsting and Rolf Snoeren, the Dutch designers with a sculptural bent and bloated ambitions, was that ''they just seemed to have the right lines.''

And Mr. Horsting and Mr. Snoeren were saying, as they stood alongside Tilda Swinton at the top of a stairway in an annex of the Louvre, that they had come a long way since their starving designer days in the early 1990's, when people called them the clowns of fashion. And they added: ''We always wanted to become a global brand.''

And Franca Sozzani, the editor of Italian Vogue, was saying, as her high heels clicked along the cobblestones of some obscure Parisian street on the way to the Junya Watanabe show, that before the current economic crisis began, designers ''were so comfortable, and they didn't have to work so hard.'' Then Ms. Sozzani added that current austerity ''is maybe a good thing in a way.''

And André Leon Talley of Vogue was saying, whenever anyone would listen, that the reason he was wearing a sable shawl from Fendi with his Phat Farm sweatsuit all week was that ''I have to have something to stroke.''

And Harley Baldwin, the proprietor of the private and movie-star exclusive Caribou Club in Aspen, and one of the town's big landlords, was explaining why a man more typically interested in interest rates than platform shoes and lingerie-dressing-for-day was in Paris awaiting the start of the Dior show: ''They're tenants of mine,'' Mr. Baldwin said. ''I'm trying to keep my hand in.''

And a woman with impressive moxie was accosting Anna Wintour, the glacial editor of American Vogue, to say, ''I really like your new hairstyle.'' In truth, Ms. Wintour's new hairstyle was her customary pageboy with a few unruly strands standing electrically on end.

And two journalists in the back row of the Ungaro show were discussing the vogue for the elegant black pearls provided to Parisian designers by the Tahitian pearl king Robert Wan. ''I visited the private island where they culture them once,'' one of these people was saying. ''It's a two-hour flight by private plane from Papeete to a flat no place in the middle of nowhere, with some shacks and some palm trees and a community of Polynesian laborers and a handful of Japanese pearl implanters who can't get off the island for months at a time.''

And a 26-year-old Chanel model, Frankie Rayder, was saying in her flat Wisconsin accent, backstage before Olivier Theyskens's show for Rochas, that runway modeling during the show season can be compared to having five jobs at one time. ''Sometimes the people are great and you love to do it,'' Ms. Rayder said. ''And sometimes the people are nasty and you really hate the clothes. It's not necessarily a great world to grow up in, but it's gorgeous, and it's never going to define my life.''

And Michel Gaubert, the D.J., was saying, between the many shows for which he has provided a soundtrack this week, that the music to avoid right now is ''the Rapture, because everybody's doing it, and Beyoncé Knowles's 'Crazy in Love,' which was the best pop song of the summer but is so over with now, and anything from the Tarantino soundtrack for 'Kill Bill,' which is great, but it's just the most obvious thing to play.''