Apple Watch is headed to Paris for Fashion Week

Apple Watch passbook apple pay

Apple has teamed up with Colette, the famous Parisian boutique, on a promotional event involving a “one day only experience” on September 30 from 11:00am to 7:00pm local time at the at fashion retailer’s gallery on rue Saint-Honoré in Paris, French blog Macplus reported Monday [Google Translate].

At the same time, members of the company’s industrial design team are headed to Paris Fashion Week, vaguely indicating that the company’s wearable device, the Apple Watch, could play a role at the semi-annual clothing trade show.

The one-day event is being teased on the official Colette website with graphics seen below that doesn’t seem to offer much in terms of details right now.

Colette’s three-story 8,000 square feet concept store in Paris features an exhibition space, bookshop and even a water bar serving more than a hundred brands of bottled water.

Colette store (Paris 001)

As the Apple Watch is being billed as a fashionable wearable device, the promotional event with the brick-and-click clothing and accessory retailer would make sense, even more so in light of Apple’s hiring of the fashion-conscious (former) Burberry CEO Angela Ahrendts, who as SVP of Retail now manages both Apple’s online and offline stores.

While we’re speculating, Apple and Coulette may be planning to demo Apple Pay with Apple Watch, or perhaps show off third-party fashionable watch bands for the product.

The seven bigger dots in the center of the invitation seen below resemble somewhat the Apple Watch’s zoomed out Home screen.

Apple and Colette (invite 001)

Fashion Week is currently held in the Carrousel du Louvre, as well as at various other venues throughout Paris. It’s also curious that a few Apple designers departed for Paris Fashion Week yesterday, as noted by MacRumors forum member ”Rogifan“.

The designers apparently travelled with Apple’s chief of all design Jony Ive and newly-hired Marc Newson on the private jet Ive bought from Steve Jobs’s widow.

Mikael Silvanto (Apple Watch 002)

Apple industrial design team member Mikael Silvanto has even shared photographs on Instagram taken aboard the plane (above) and in Paris (below). One particular image seen right below pictures Silvanto wearing Apple Watch at a meal, a cigarette in his mouth.

Even more curiously, Silvanto took the photos and his whole Instagram private soon after Apple blogs shared his images. Maybe because of the cigarette?

Mikael Silvanto (Apple Watch 001)

At any rate, at least we can ascertain that prominent Apple designers and their Apple Watches are now in Paris. Whether or not they’re headed to the Colette event tomorrow or for Paris Fashion Week, which runs from September 23 through October 1, is anyone’s guess.

I will be surprised if the Apple Watch doesn’t get some significant stage time during Paris Fashion Week (I think the gizmo will be the star of the show) given Apple saw fit to dispatch its brightest designers to Paris.

Apple Watch is due in early-2015 starting at $349, but the company is yet to start accepting pre-orders for the device.

Let the speculation game begin: if you have your own theory about these developments, feel free to chime in with your observations down in the comments.

[Macplus, Colette and MacRumors Forum]