Nobody ask for that in Europe either, unless you're interested in heavily regulated industries like energy or banking (and they ask for more than $20,000). But we're talking about small businesses, right?
I don't know if fashion industry is heavily regulated in Paris, but a 15,000-euro fee to the government sounds like a big stretch. They used to require 7,500 euro of starting capital for SARL (a private limited liability company), but it was still your money, not the government's. But it's irrelevant, because the minimum amount changed and it's 1 euro now.
There's still an issue of paying various legal and professional fees before you can start your company. It depends on your needs and type of the company, but according to Doing Business report by the World Bank [1] this cost (represented as a percentage of the country's income per capita; not ideal but good enough) is lower in France and dozen of other European countries than in the United States.
1 - http://www.doingbusiness.org/data/exploretopics/starting-a-b...