If you think about haute couture (high fashion), you’re likely to think of Paris, France. Paris has always been at the forefront of world fashion. Clothing designed in France makes it all around the world in a matter of weeks, with similar designs soon showing up from London to Hong Kong. French accessories aren’t any different. Accessories designed in Paris are big business and often affect accessories fashion for the rest of the world. In 2009, the must-have French accessories are handbags, or purses, as the Americans call them. French handbags are known all over the world. From Louis Vuitton and Chanel to Etienne Aigner and Yves Saint Laurent, to lower priced but still beautiful bags from the likes of Jerome Gruet.

Started in 1893, Chanel is one of the most loved handbag designers in the world. This year’s Chanel handbags are gorgeous, many of them with the typical Chanel chain handle, and all of them with the very familiar Chanel logo. En vogue colors are gray, red and black with some beiges and pinks thrown in for a little splash of color.

Louis Vuitton designs luxury leather luggage and purses. The Stephen Sprouse collection is popular this year, with bags having either the traditional brown and cream Louis Vuitton design base then overlaid with enormous red and pink flowers or with brightly colored graffiti on the same Louis Vuitton background.

Yves Saint Laurent , another of the high-end bag designers, has some sweet clutch purses for 2009 that are designed to look like the front of an envelope, complete with stamp and postmark. Adorable. They come in black or ivory patent leather. In tote bags, Yves Saint Laurent has a similar design that they call the Y-Mail Patent Tote Bag. Priced at around $500, it’s actually not a bad price for something so unique and so exquisitely made.

Jerome Gruet has a little shop in Paris that specializes in beautiful quality canvas bags with contrasting trims. Jerome Gruet bags are great for a woman who likes a larger bag, because she carries everything with her including the kitchen sink.

Finally, check out Catherine Zarzecki who specializes in small handbags and clutches. What makes Catherine Zarzecki stand out is all of the accents on her bags are made with semi-precious stones. In 2009, she’s gone with red, black, blues and greens with some very special limited edition silver clutch bags.

Whatever your bag style though, you’ll find anything you’re looking for in Paris.

The ‘Lady Lynn’ is quite the fashion icon. She is always turned out in vintage designer pieces (a little Missoni here, and little YSL there), mixes high and low fashions, wears the most fabulous shoes this side of Vogue’s closet and never, ever looks like she is trying to fashionably hard. Having owned a vintage clothing boutique in the New England area, she knows a thing or two about clothes, how they fit and what works. Mix in her being uber fit, what more is there to say? Couture bows down to this BFF (that is beautiful fashionable female, in case you were not in the know).

The Paris Ready To Wear (Pret-a-Porter) fashion shows will be held from September 27 to October 5, and one of the most closely watched shows will be Yves Saint Laurent, taking place at the Grand Palais on October 2. Although Stefano Pilati has been designing for YSL since 2004, this will be his first Parisian collection out from under the shadow of Yves Saint Laurent himself, who died in June 2008.

New York Fashion Week was filled with tributes to YSL, who was known for his slouchy silhouette and elegant appropriation of menswear . Tom Ford, who designed the collection until 2004, ignored this meme in favor of the sexy siren look he perfected for Gucci, but his worldview was met with disfavor by the Yves Saint Laurent customer. Pilati, however, has stayed closer to the mandate he’s been given.

His Autumn/Winter 2008 collection featured menswear-inspired separates in neutral monochrome, with subtle shots of color like cobalt blue and sunshine yellow to alleviate the seriousness of the look. The waist and hips were a major focal point, with high-waist pants accented by narrow belts, color blocking, or ingenious cutouts in their matching jackets. Skirts and pants both belled downwards to echo the cocoon shape of the coats, allowing Pilati to present sophisticated but flattering lines. Tactile but potentially dour fabrics such as flannel, velvet, leather and tweed were accessorized with punk rock dog collars, severe haircuts and black lipstick, as if the youngest daughter in an English manor had dressed in the dark, grabbing half of her own clothing and half of her mother’s. My favorite look was a high-collared brown velvet jacket with prominent zippers mixed with an asymmetrical black leather zippered skirt. It sounds odd in the telling, but it was a collection you not only wanted to look at, you wanted to wear.

I believe Yves Saint Laurent would truly be proud of his namesake of a sort. After all, he got his start at 17 when he took over design duties for Christian Dior.

It is not often that you hear shopkeepers say that items are too special to be sold in their store, but that is just what Mark Haddaway and Katy Rodriguez did with their special vintage finds. That is, until now. Come October 30, the co-owners of the Resurrection boutique in Manhattan, a 12-year-old veritable institution of vintage finds located in the East Village, will be auctioning off an expansive trove of vintage treasures through Christie’s auction house. Known for their discerning eye, many pieces up for auction represent significant time capsules in the fashion universe. The pieces up for auction are special indeed, with items from Paco Rabanne, Pierre Cardin, Norma Kamali, Vivienne Westwood and Yves Saint Laurent to name a few, making this an auction on which all fashionable curator eyes will be on. Simon Andrews, Christie’s specialist of 20th-century decorative art and design has categorized the lot into four categories: avant-garde pop culture, romanticism, discord and disorder of punk, and designer wear. Notable items such as the iconic Pierre Cardin bubble vinyl satellite cape circa 1969, represent the pop-art decade; T-shirts made by Westwood and Malcolm McLaren for the Sex Pistols and made famous by them, display the iconography of Union Jacks, upside-down crucifixes, “God save the Queen” and “Destroy” slogans, represent the anarchic decadence of discord and disorder, better known as the punk era; handmade leather pieces for Sly Stone during his Sly and The Family Stone heyday, mark the seventies decade of rock/punk; and items from Pierre Cardin and Yves Saint Laurent, represent the designer wear era of the ‘80s.

The Rabanne pieces, especially the chainmaille-esque wedding dress made of silver and white leather held together by metal rings, are expected to fetch the highest bids out of the entire lot. Regardless to what the duo’s lot brings in, it will be an interesting bidding session, surely with a little fisticuffs thrown in for good measure. What? Did you think all of those important vintage pieces would sell in a civilized fashion? Not!

The legendary couturier and trailblazer Yves Saint Laurent died at his home in Paris late Sunday after a prolonged illness. The designer, considered by many to be one of the greatest designers in history, began his 50 year-plus career at the tender age of 21, when he blazed an assured trail by replacing the original legend, couturier Christian Dior himself.

Yves would go on to become a beloved icon, known for shaking up the buttoned-up tight collars of Parisian couture with street influences and seductive nuances like the Le Smoking Jacket atop a bare chest, the menswear-inspired tuxedo for women, the ‘into the wild’ look of the lace-up safari top open down to the navel (who could forget Veruska standing out in the wilds of the African savannah with a safari top, big floppy hat and a rifle behind her head?), the famous white suit that Bianca Jagger wore to her wedding to Mick and countless others. Where would modern day ready-to-wear be without him? He was considered to be single-handedly responsible for its creation with the 1966 launch of his Rive Gauche collection that reflected his distinctive design aesthetic, sense of color and artistry of cut. So powerful was he in the fashion world once upon a time, that if he changed a hemline slightly or shifted the placement of a waistline, it would send the fashion world into a frenzy and his changes would ripple around the world. The designer would go on to create a plethora of fragrances as well as a very successful YSL Beaute beauty line. It was a sad day when he retired in 2002, an end of an era really, but today in the fashion world a very bright light has been permanently dimmed. Yves you will be missed!