Paquin and Paul Poiret were neighbours on the Rue du la Paix and fierce competitors. Poiret was seen as the flamboyant and outrageous designer who pushed the boundaries of acceptability, always challenging but not always changing the ways of Parisian women. Paquin in contrast, was seen as the house with style and taste, Jeanne appeared to judge the tolerable limits of change better than Poiret, with one exception. The House of Paquin executed Paul Iribe’s designs for the previously mentioned play Rue du la Paix, with almost disastrous results. As previously mentioned the play was received with mixed reactions with much of the commentary critical of the 50 costumes paraded through out the scenes. They were described as bizarre and likened to the "poor taste of Teutons" and that "Madame Paquin will face a lot of problems getting them accepted by French women who care about an aesthetic line" . Her biographer states she was "simply amused" by the controversy but was quick to point out that her house had produced the costumes for Iribe and did not designed them.

Jeanne is also noted for making black the new black, until then fashion houses never designed in black. She did this by lining black jackets and coats with dazzlingly bright silks of red, turquoise and purple or embroidering basic black gowns in sparkling jewel like colours. Her favourite colours were white, gold and pale green and I have created the Empress in those colours.

At her peak Jeanne Paquin dressed royalty, the rich and the famous of Europe including the Queens of Belgium, Portugal, and Spain and the dress for Jane Avril’s opening solo show in Paris.

Self proclaimed "King of Fashion", he was largely responsible for the social acceptance of women wearing pants and freed women from the tight, constricting corsets of the turn of the 20th century. His designs were intricate, detailed and made brilliant use of the drape of the fabric rather than a tailor’s traditional approach of stitch and dart. Anyone, who was anyone, in the social scene of Europe and America, had a Poiret gown.

Poiret was the enfant terribles of his time, learning his trade from Jacque Doucet and Charles Worth and opening his own house in 1903 as a neighbour of Jeanne Paquin. He credited himself with changing the shape of women and giving us the Empire line, the lampshade tunic and the hobble skirt. Poiret was a flamboyant man, whose parties were legendary. He made it his business to outrage, shock and sometimes alarm the staid elite, introducing ground breaking designs and methods through innovation but occasionally took things a little too far and became the subject of critics and gossip columnists.

He didn’t restrict himself to fashion; he had considerable influence on interior design and opened his own design studio called Atelier Martine named after his second daughter. He had interests in a commercial art gallery called Galerie Barbazanges, produced a perfume named after his eldest daughter Rosine and ran a school for decorative arts, which he cleverly used as a cheap source of designs.

Poiret was the first to name his designs, including each gown. This had a twofold effect: it individualised each gown, lending an art piece air to them and almost gave them a persona but more importantly it had a commercial aspect. Unlike a straight code number used to identify stock, a name could be registered and at times copyrighted, a formality that was used as a tool against piracy of his designs and ideas, it gave him a legal platform to pursue if required. Even at the beginning of the twentieth century having your designs copied was rife.