The TV cameras were told to ignore her and Austria's rich and powerful sought to avoid her.

Half-a-million MySpace hits is one modern route to the Cinderella story. It let Birmingham's Clare Maguire sign to a major label at the once unremarkable age of 20. Then she was led through music's corridors of power, drinking with Jay-Z, squired by Rick Rubin to Leonard Cohen's rehearsals, offered a song by an enchanted Jarvis Cocker. Tentatively pushed in 2010, her album (with Ellie Goulding's producer) is finally due next month.

The flamboyant French designer Jean Paul Gaultier channelled the spirit of the Moulin Rouge at his catwalk show in Paris yesterday.

From the most controversial films ever to the most scandalous book bannings, your tastes this year have tended heavily towards the contentious and the profane.

A display of rare vintage photographs of burlesque star Dita Von Teese will be exhibited at Ordinary Light in London.

In a spring/summer season that has seen designers playing to their own strengths – going back to their roots, if you will – Vivienne Westwood did just that at her Gold Label show in Paris yesterday.

If the A-list contingent was conspicuous by its absence at the spring/summer collections in Milan earlier this week it was out in force today in Paris, the last stop on the international designer fashion circuit and home to probably the most gifted fashion talent in the world.

The days when shopping for underwear meant an uninspiring choice between sensible not-so-smalls at M&S and racy but cheap Ann Summers fare are thankfully a dim and distant memory for British women. But although the arrival of high-end lingerie label Agent Provocateur 15 years ago brought with it an exciting new feel and aesthetic, and attracted a slew of copycat brands in the process, the sector has remained surprisingly static compared with the changing moods of fashion that influence the rest of a woman's wardrobe.

The reclusive art collector Charles Saatchi famously never turns up to his own parties. And the launch of his new book was no exception. There were, though, plenty of signed copies of My Name is Charles Saatchi and I am An Artoholic scattered around the Saatchi Gallery in London's Chelsea for guests to peruse. These invitees included Richard E Grant, Zadie Smith, Alan Yentob, Trevor Eve, Kathy Lette, Graham Norton and Harry Enfield who mingled in the first-floor galleries among the canvasses.