A stroll down the Croisette, say from the Majestic Hotel to the Carlton Hotel will take you past the most expensive shops in the world – or least their Cannes incarnations – Rodeo Drive on the Mediterranean Sea!

The Croissette is a "designer’s row."

I have been walking by these stores/boutiques for many years now and almost always never see anyone that resembles a customer in them.Well, after all, a woman’s bag (or purse for the less prosaic) can be priced at 5000 euros and articles of clothing for both men and women priced accordingly – very, very expensive.

Do you want a $25,000 watch? How about $50,000?

We’re talking some ten to fifteen blocks of Pierre Cardin, Bulgari, Fred, Hugo Boss, Dolce & Gabana, Ferragamo, etc., etc. —  interspersed with restaurants and five star hotels.I know who stays at the hotels for about 20 weeks of the year – the international businessman with the fat expense account. But I doubt very much that he is buying arriving-home presents for his wife and children from these ridiculously priced emporiums selling what appear to me as fashion-gone-mad, or at least ludicrous! (A good word, I thought, until hijacked by a hip- hop artist!)

Expensive jewelry blends in with the exotic environment.

So who buys? Cannes is one of the places in the world where the fact that there exists hordes of obscenely rich people who spend vast amounts of money on the trivialities of life is made clear as a bell and this fact is writ so large but buried within an environment and lifestyle so agreeable that it doesn’t appear offensive or outright despicable – at least immediately!It’s kind of a joke, like when the Meryl Streep character in “The Devil Wears Prada” says to her faltering protégé, “Don’t be silly, everybody wants to be like us!” When I am here I believe her.

Movie Review:

The Devil Wears Prada

Directed by David Frankel — 20th Century Fox 2006
Starring: Meryl Streep and Anne Hathaway

Based upon the successful novel of Lauren Weisenburger, “The Devil Wears Prada” is a “pastiche” of a movie – slight but still wonderful. It is also set in a fantastical world, a funny but sad take on an industry full of poseurs, artists with real talent and functionaries whose greed and love of power knows little boundaries.

"Queen Miranda" with her subjects.

I did not work in the fashion industry but I worked for a little while – a very little while – in the movie and T.V. industry in Hollywood where the mores and the manners of many executives matched, or exceeded, the nasty meanness of Miranda Priestly, the fashion editor of Runway magazine, who is played by Meryl Streep.Tyrannical bosses are not found only in the glossy and trashy worlds of fashion and Hollywood, of course, but somehow these particular milieus seem to render the vain posturing of this bunch more than a little ridiculous.

The world of fashion would be surreal to most of us.

I interviewed a production chief in Hollywood once who reportedly took great glee from the unfortunate fact that his assistant, who was terrified of him, would often faint when he was yelled at by him. This boss had a famous temper and no patience with anything that he had not expected or legislated.At one point I was also shooting in the halls of Cosmopolitan, and while the editor, the legendary Helen Gurley Brown, could not have been more gracious to myself and our crew it was crystal clear that our mission was to be accomplished swiftly and efficiently – this message being delivered by a very nervous staff of assistants.But this is a high-octane world, moving at the speed of caprice with much at stake in the terms of ego and money.

The runway in Paris.

The movie is very funny, the acting across the board is excellent and we get to go behind the scenes in a glamorous industry, travel to Paris with the young Andy – Anne Hathaway – as the much abused, “fat” assistant to Miranda as she struggles her way to success this very weird world of unwearable clothes, body images from Darfur and a “droit de seignor” that takes on new meaning.This crowd would be fun to watch in Cannes.