I remember standing in the minimal dark bathroom on that first evening in Paris before dinner. A film set of a bathroom. Looking at my reflection I thought about my school friends; many of them confided that their degrees felt pointless and that they were just going through the motions because they didn’t know what else to do. They were waiting tables or stacking supermarket shelves to pay their way towards degrees which they really weren’t sure about.

I was staying in a hotel on Rue St Honoré ready for Paris Fashion Week.

I did have the unnerving sense that I’d ended up somewhere I wasn’t supposed to be: impostor syndrome. But ultimately it was Eugene who’d asked me to be there and who was I to question his judgement? I knew my way around a hairdryer just as well as I knew how to plug a MiniDisc player into a backstage sound system. I was useful, I was there and I deeply wanted to help. Although I hadn’t planned it, it was great. Having fallen into hair like this, all I had to do now was just figure out a way of staying around and keeping it together.

Eugene gave me his MiniDisc and Creative Soundblaster, a subwoofer with four tweeters, to plug together and place strategically around backstage. This was long before Bluetooth. Setting up the sound system was always one of the very first things we did. Once the tunes were playing, everything else started to slot into place. Eugene introduced me to KRS-One through that glorious setup, and I never let that thread drop.

Individual pret-a-porter shows are hard to separate now, they’ve merged into one. The pace of them, the noise, the cigarettes, the champagne afterwards. Studio visits are calmer and clearer memories. Sarah Moon was cogitating elegantly through a very bright rooflit loft studio. Paolo Roversi was smoking heavily, drinking lots of coffee, he had a patio with trellises and dark ground floor rooms.

The slower Haute Couture mornings I also remember more clearly. One that particularly stands out decades later was Viktor and Rolf in what might as well have been a full-on greenhouse of a studio. Everywhere there was an intense seriousness and dedication about the work. A quiet focused methodical work, timelessly prepared for.

Eugene moved through all of it with a quality I didn’t have a word for then. I do now: Sprezzatura from the Italian meaning something like studied effortlessness. Nothing performed, nothing wasted; just an easiness with existence. I find this calmness about Eugene so comforting; it’s like he emanates peace. Even in places like Paris, which I think he once told me is his least favourite city.

I was watching everything. Taking in as much as I could.