Fashion has been an important industry and cultural export of France since the seventeenth century, and modern "haute couture" originated in Paris in the 1860s. Today, Paris, along with London, Milan, and New York City, is considered one of the world's fashion capitals, and the city is home or headquarters to many of the premier fashion houses, including Balenciaga, Céline, Chanel, Chloe, Dior, Givenchy, Jean-Paul Gaultier, Hermès, Lanvin, Rochas, Vuitton and Yves Saint Laurent.

The association of France with fashion and style (French: la mode) dates largely to the reign of Louis XIV when the luxury goods industries in France came increasingly under royal control and the French royal court became, arguably, the arbiter of taste and style in Europe. The rise in prominence of French fashion was linked to the creation of the fashion press in the early 1670s (due in large part to Jean Donneau de Visé) which transformed the fashion industry by marketing designs to a broad public outside the French court and by popularizing notions such as the fashion "season" and changing styles. Louis XIV notably introduced one of the most noticeable feature of the men's costume of the time : the immense wigs of curled hair. It is said these originated from the fact that Louis XIV started to wear wigs as he was getting bald, and to imitate this his courtiers put on false hair. The wearing of wigs lasted for over a century; they went through many changes, but they were never quite so exaggerated as during this period.

Carine Roitfeld (French pronunciation: [ka.ʁin ʁwat.fɛld]; born September 19, 1954, in Paris, France) Editor in Chief of CR Fashion-Book (as of 2012), was the editor-in-chief of Vogue Paris from 2001 to January 31, 2011. A former fashion model and writer, she announced her resignation on December 17, 2010; she was succeeded by Emmanuelle Alt.

Her father, Jacques Roitfeld, a white-Russian émigré who died in 1999, was a film producer before he moved to Paris and met her mother. Carine Roitfeld describes her mother as a "very classic Frenchwoman." She describes her father as her "idol" and says that "he was always away, filming, at Cannes". She describes her upbringing in the upscale 16th arrondissment of Paris as "very bourgeois. I'm not saying we were in diamonds, but very, very comfortable."

Roitfeld and her partner, Christian Restoin, have been together for three or so decades, though they are not married. Restoin was the creator of the Equipment clothing line, which he closed in 2001 after Roitfeld accepted the Vogue editorship. The couple has two children, Julia Restoin Roitfeld who was born on November 12, 1980, and Vladimir Restoin Roitfeld on December 1984. both in Paris.