Michèle Montagne

Despite her infamously press shy stance, publicist Michèle Montagne’s over thirty-year career has seen her become synonymous with Paris Fashion Week and the more daring, iconoclastic designers that show during it. Montagne’s clients have included Helmut Lang, Rick Owens , Ann Demeulemeester and Haider Ackermann .

Montagne summed up her role for The Wall Street Journal as "really an exchange — helping designers achieve what they want to express.” In real terms, this translates to Montagne assisting and supporting her clients in any form she and they believe beneficial, be it design direction, styling, public relations and business advice. "Nothing is beneath her," Haider Ackermann told The Wall Street Journal, remembering back to his first show, when models late from a previous show prompted Montagne to get on her knees and shoehorn them their boots.

Born in the early 1950s in the Marne, Montagne moved to Paris in 1972 to take up a role in the office of lobbyist Jacques Bloch-Morange. She started freelancing and thus began her fashion career, starting with her representation of Martine Sitbon, who would go on to design for Chloé, and then Austrian designer Helmut Lang in 1987.