FIVE hours after Id started visiting some of Jean-Paul Gaultiers favorite places in Paris, a woman I did not know grabbed my manhood.  Id gone up to Montmartre to buy a ticket for the following evenings show at the Moulin Rouge, the colorful if over-touristed cabaret whose gaudy charms have long held sway over the imagination of the designer we associate with Madonnas cone bra and the male skirt. Ticket purchased, I walked a block south and stumbled onto a rival establishment called Cabaret Frou Frou, whereupon a husky-voiced young woman hurriedly sat me down in front of a metal pole and offered me a dance.  Aha, it dawned on me. Not a cabaret, but something more intimate. I tried to make my apologies, but she cut me off. I do a dance! she said in heavily-accented English.  She then proceeded to walk her index and middle finger up my inner thigh and grab me. I stood abruptly and said, Sorry  no. Im ... Je suis homosexual.  She stared at me unmoved, as if Id just told her that my hobbies include raising chinchillas.  Heretofore, my chief anxiety about traveling to France had always been that, at some point during my trip, I would be called upon to pronounce the name of the town Ypres. But my Frou Frou experience had now redrawn that map. The French: unexpectedly handsy.  A month earlier, Id written to Monsieur Gaultier and asked him to send me a list of the places in Paris that are the most meaningful to him. I knew that the selections made by an avatar of louche glamour and subversive wit would provide a refreshing tonic to the City of Lights inherent sentimentality. Not only has Mr. Gaultier inspected many of the citys public and private spaces as possible sites on which to stage fashion shows, but hes an artist whos always looking for visual appeal, and often finding it in unlikely places.  The idea was that I would spend three days visiting some of these locales and then have dinner with him at a restaurant of his choice  Jules Verne, the Alain Ducasse 120-seater on the second platform of the Eiffel Tower  before visiting the rest. And so, one June night just two days after lincident Frou Frou, I found myself  accompanied by Mr. Gaultier and his director of communications, Jelka Music  zooming toward the Eiffel Tower in a black S.U.V. driven by the designers driver and bodyguard. We go to a cliché, but a fabulous cliché that I love, the blond and boyishly enthusiastic Mr. Gaultier told me with some merriment.  Talking to Mr. Gaultier is like being with your favorite eccentric uncle, the one who bought you liquor in high school  his crystal blue eyes glisten with warmth and pop with curiosity; when hes very excited, his left pinky twitches. He added, I love postcard clichés. You have to be a genius to take a good picture of Paris. So many have already been taken.  Mr. Gaultiers admiration for the Eiffel Tower  over the years he has recreated the monuments iconic architecture in both clothing and jewelry  became palpable when we got in its elevator and stared at the structures workings: Its like lace, he said. Like metallic lace. The messenger bag slung over Mr. Gaultiers shoulder only enhanced his affect of childlike animation. As the elevator eased upward, the recesses of my mind bodied forth the name Willy Wonka.  Once in the twinkly and glass-drenched dining room, Mr. Gaultier, all courtliness and je-vous-en-prie, insisted that I have the seat with the best view. To dine elegantly at a great height over Paris is to render yourself at once rooted but vulnerable  you feel like a jewel on a tiara, but youre glad that the city is not known for its earthquakes. As we sipped pink Champagne and gazed down at a doll-size Paris, I thought, I could get very used to being Jean-Paul Gaultier.  Ill admit I hadnt expected to be at the Eiffel Tower with him. Weeks earlier, when Id thought about the picks that I might get from the enfant terrible of French fashion and now the chief designer for Hermès, whose high-low aesthetic is a heady cocktail of exquisite tailoring and satiny, trusslike corseting, I imagined a smattering of after-hours S & M clubs, perhaps a to-the-trade-only boutique specializing in 18th-century military epaulets carved in sandalwood by a Formosan prince and his colony of lepers. But instead I received a list of 15 or so locations, some of which, like the Moulin Rouge and the Folies Bergère and the flea market at Clignancourt, could not accurately be described as recherché.  And so I made my way into Gaultiers Paris, hoping to be able to find the beating pulse behind the postcard cliché. The only hotel on Mr. Gaultiers list was the Pavillon de la Reine, where he had lived for two years during the 1990s. This vine-covered, 54-room mansion is separated from the lovely Place des Vosges in the Marais district by a hush-inducing private courtyard. Though I had not been able to secure a room, Laure Pertusier, the hotels elegant, young director of sales gave me a tour. As we took in the hotels cozy blend of 17th-century wooden beams and Louis XIII-style fireplaces and antiques, Ms. Pertusier told me that Pavillons clientele was not the Champs-Élysées crowd. Not so bling-bling.  HENRY ALFORD is a contributing editor at Travel & Leisure and Vanity Fair.
As the bold-face crowd descends on Paris for the city’s semiannual Fashion Week, the designer Jean-Paul Gaultier plots out an itinerary of his favorite haunts.