You probably haven't heard of Marie-Christiane Marek, but she is a French fashion programme presenter whose show used to be quite influential. She has created the "Designer Xmas Tree Association" and every year gets all her stylish pals (including Diesel, Lacroix, Sonia Rykiel, Kenzo, Cacharel and the list goes on) to create special trees that are auctioned off for the "Sol en Si" charity which helps children (and their families) with HIV. This year they earner 30.000, with Marithé & François Girbaud's creation - a play on the word Noël that is more modern art then Xmas decoration (or perhaps not?) - fetching the most (4,000 euros).

The trees are currently on display in the entrance hall of the French Culture and Communication building, itself a pretty surprising building (think classic Haussmann covered with a aluminium exoskeleton). Lacroix has used the limited edition Evian bottles we talked about a while ago, and Sonia Rykiel has gone X-rated, but our favourite is this unreal affair from Kenzo which includes miniature flatscreen TVs showing films of parrots!

There are some pretty bizarre/interesting/psychedlic interpretations in there, and the Ministry is right in the centre of town, so it's easy to go and take a look.

Seeing as we're extra nice (but sometimes extra naughty too) you can have a peek at our Flickr gallery of all the trees by clicking here.

Here's all the essential information for the Designer Xmas Tree exhibition at the Ministry of Culture in Paris

Where: The Ministère de la Culture et de la Communication, 182 rue Saint Honoré, Paris 1st arrondissement. Métro Palais Royal - Musée du Louvre or Louvre - Rivoli (line 1)
When: 7th December 2007 - 2nd January 2008
Opening hours: weekdays 9am to 7pm
How much: unsurprisingly, it's free!
Our Flickr gallery: here


Bigger map here