Naturally, Fashion Week in Paris ended on October 3 with a glorious, kissy-face gala, but a bracing morning-after coda was provided to the assembly by a curious, if not outright itchy, worry plaguing the tres-chic hordes: Whether the dozens of obligatory fly-bys to the many venues across the week had led to an unwanted encounter with one of Paris’ leading entomological citizens, cimex lectularius, or the common bedbug. Paris has been experiencing a steep spike in the blood-sucking critters lately, not that they have ever been truly eradicated from any world capital.
But the recent spike in Paris has been painful, and two concurrent events, Fashion Week and the month-long Rugby World Cup, won by South Africa by one point on October 28, have ensured that the additional few million October visitors to France will be checking and sanitizing their clothes and luggage closely upon their return home.
But before we strap on the metaphorical HAZMAT suits and respirators for a deep dive into proven methods of detection and combat, first, a brief Baedeker on the taxonomy and habits of the highly agile, and ancient, parasite. Fact is: Bedbugs have been our fellow travelers for millennia, and will continue to be so.
Cimex lectularius are nocturnal and have adapted to attack their hosts for blood as they, the hosts, are most vulnerable, namely, as they are unconscious. According to the theory, as humans moved from a nomadic to a more domesticated existence, the parasites found us to be more opportunistic prey in that we slept, more or less dependably, in the same place. But of course they were with us before that — which, according to the theory, is the evolutionary key to the bedbugs’ fantastic ability to “hitchhike” in latter-day clothing, bedding, accoutrements, furniture, luggage, upholstery, and places of assembly.
Put another way, globally speaking, there is no such thing as “eradication,’ there’s only combat, as our friends the French are discovering. And there are bigger worries made by far larger international assemblies than any mere fashion week in Paris immediately down the line: Next year’s Olympics in France and in Paris are going to be a nightmare as the city fills literally to the gills with delegations, families, officials and the like. The government expects 15 million spectators over the course of the Olympiad, locals included.
Not so fast, say the scientists. The reason that there seemed to be a resurgence of bedbugs in Paris around this fall’s fashion week is that some pesky fashion ‘influencers,’ and the attendant press who love every twist and turn of every Fashion Week bungle, magnified the experience of human-bedbug encounters to the point hat it simply seemed as if there had been a cimex lectularius spike. No less an entomological authority than Scientific American weighed in on the Fashion Week debate. Virginia Tech professor Dini Miller told the magazine: “It has the media excited, but in all honesty, these populations don’t develop just overnight. And I promise these bedbugs have been there for a while.”
But never mind all that. Of all of Europe’s lovely capitals, just two hardy sibling cities who share centuries of war and centuries intellectual, cultural and actual DNA, Paris and London, can be said to compete for the title of Europe’s leading metropolis. As siblings do, they also share levels of vulnerability to metropolitan afflictions, and a considerable ability to scuffle with each other, which is to say: It lasted no more than a few minutes, upon the closure of this year’s Paris Fashion Week, before the first dispatches appeared in London that the dread bedbug infestation of Paris hopped over via the (infested) thousands of returning hipsters on the Channel train or through Heathrow, Luton, Gatwick, et al.
As we know, all working field dogs are beloved breeds in England as a result of the country’s unending love of farming and field sports, and field dogs’ infinitely sensitive noses can, also, be trained to sniff out cimex lectularius in urban environments. Parisians have discovered this as well. Pictured top, a spaniel in the employ of a Paris bedbug detection company called Doggybug works his way through a stack of theatre-seat cushions.
The takeaway? It’s going to take many hundreds of excellently trained spaniels to work their way through London’s theatres, performing arenae, restaurants, and hotels, to say nothing of transportation hubs or modes of conveyance. In arguably its greatest gesture of gentility and vulnerability, the London Tube still has upholstery on its trains. That, according to Transport for London, the capital’s public transport authority, gets cleaned regularly.
And in the largest sense, Heathrow Airport Authority reports, of its 214 possible destinations in 84 countries, No. 2 on the list of destination airports is New York’s JFK.