PARIS As designers have been sending their spring 2009 collections down the runways here, sometimes it has been hard to know whether one was watching a global industry engaged in its most urgently creative sales endeavors or if one was in the midst of a reality show. Fashion trades on glamour, bitchiness and exclusivity. That keeps people intrigued. But it is that rare industry so focused on the ancillary elements that it often shrugs off the importance of its core product: the clothes. The equivalent misdirected focus would be akin to Hollywood being so fixated on ... (more)