From September 20-23, 2005, LE CUIR A PARIS exhibition will be held at Paris Nord Villepinte as part of Premier Vision Pluriel, a new label, launched on May 18, combining the following exhibitions: Premier Vision, Expofil, Indigo, Mod’Amont and Le Cuir A Paris (www.premierevision-pluriel.com).

The perspectives for this event look promising. Exhibiting companies have welcomed the establishment of closer links among textiles and accessories exhibitions. To date, almost 250 exhibitors from 20 countries will be presenting their best products and innovations in finished and semi-finished leathers, exotic and special skins, furs, textiles and components. 43 new companies have already registered, mainly from Italy (including, in particular, Concerias Zonta, Romana, di Urgnano and Consorzio D & Co), Spain (with Tecnopiel among others), France (J M Marthens will be showing their new collection in stretch leather), Germany, England, the United States (Pan American Leathers will be showing their crocodile skin collection) and Finland (with Bröderna Brandt Lâderfabrik AB in particular, a company that specialises in elk and deer skin).

Each Premier Vision Pluriel event receives over 50,000 visitors / buyers / designers, of whom 80% come from all over the world. To make it easier for buyers and designers to visit the exhibition, Le Cuir A Paris, which will be held in the north wing of Hall 5, will allow all holders of Premier Vision Pluriel passes free access to the exhibition from inside hall 5. As for those wishing to visit the Le Cuir A Paris exhibition only, they will be allowed free access through the north entrance to hall 5 (accessible via a shuttle at the subway exit )

Exclusives Leather Trends: During the next edition of Le Cuir A Paris, the winter 2006 – 2007 trends will be presented exclusively and in preview. Winter 2006 -2007 is characterised by fascination with old things and the poetry of the past. The eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and the Middle Ages are a rich source of inspiration. To illustrate these trends, the Trends Gallery will propose four4 fashion themes:

GREAT EXPECTATIONS (Charles Dickens). This theme takes its inspiration from the late nineteenth century and the start of the industrial era. Both literary and cinematographic, it borrows from Charles Dickens and the London of his time a grey-blue mood tinged with fictionalized melancholic poverty; and from Charlie Chaplin and Gustave Eiffel the fascination with the beginnings of mechanization and gentle mockery of it.

CRAZY DOLLS. A desire for a pretty-pretty, spick-and-span look balanced by a taste for strangeness has fostered baby doll mania. Characters with staring eyes loom up, enormous or tiny, straight out of Lewis Carroll and fairytale myths and legends. The ballerinas on the musical box and little lead soldiers wait patiently to be dressed by the designers’ imagination.

CELTIC ATTRACTION. Nomads from the north and Celtic barbarians roaming the arid steppes and Mongolian plains, wrapped in long wild furs. They ride over the flat heath, put up dolmens and standing stones, and wage war, protected by their ornate shields and metallic armour.

SPLENDEUR BAROQUE. Both Byzantine and mediaeval, steeped in art nouveau, caressed by Fortuny, Klimt and Hoffman, a sensual, flamboyant redhead, decked with precious jewels, incarnates this rich, poisonous trend. Her nonchalant elegance dwells in the imagination of the outcast artists.