Paris Fashion Week spring/summer 08

From New York to London, Milan and finally, Paris... the fashion marathon ends on a high note with Valentino waving goodbye and a host of fashion legends presenting gorgeous collections for the next season.

It's a pirating summer for Gaultier
Jean Paul Gaultier clad his fearless women as mercenaries in camouflage gear for hacking their way through the jungle. Some ditched their pirate hats for crochet caps or scarves with fringes which got tangled up in their hair.

"They are pirates because fashion is a form of piracy. That is people who take a little bit from everywhere, take things and mix them up," Gaultier said.

But it was a romantic vision of the military life, with epaulettes and fatigues embroidered like a Louis VX jacket and camouflage print corsets over asymmetric tulle petticoats.

Source: AFP

Paris Fashion Week spring/summer 08

Karl Lagerfeld's rainbow of light
Against a backdrop of coloured lights, Lagerfeld's own label collection was hard-edged, focussing obsessively on triangles.

Models had their fringes combed into a triangle over the forehead, when they weren't wearing double-hats, and dangled triangular earrings or spiky bracelets. A stand-up mandarin collar left a triangle shape at the neck, a sheer second-skin body stocking in stretch tulle was superimposed with an opaque triangle.

Source: AFP

Paris Fashion Week spring/summer 08

Viktor & Rolf make fashion sing
The Dutch design duo Viktor (Horsting) and Rolf (Snoeren), who are known for staging spectacles, toned down their act this season with a show full of pretty, feminine and wearable clothes.

Multi-layered dresses with shoulder capes, delicate black lace superimposed over pale rose pink, Pierrot collars which lifted slightly as the models moved, and pom poms dangling from belts had a Commedia dell'Arte feel.

The stand-up pleated collar of a white mini frock framed the model's face like an Elizabethan ruff, while trousers were cut wide and topped with trapeze-shaped mini dresses.

Source: AFP

Paris Fashion Week spring/summer 08

Issey Miyake gets winded
Vacuum maker James Dyson teamed up with Japanese fashion label Issey Miyake for a collection with an airy theme aimed at showcasing innovative designs.

Models stepped out of a giant plastic yellow tube similar to those used in Dyson's distinctive bagless vacuum cleaners that use cyclone technology to suck up dirt.

Models wore boots shaped like tubes and one wore a dress fastened at the waist with a loose coil of grey tubing. Another skirt carried a "five-year guarantee" tag.

The show was entitled "The Wind", after the original idea behind the collection.

Miyake's collection also brought in a nautical theme, with one model wearing a green jean jacket and skirt printed with wind patterns going over oceans.

Source: Reuters

Paris Fashion Week spring/summer 08

Dior's dandy tribute
John Galliano set the tone for his Christian Dior show by opening "An Englishman in New York, a big hit for Sting, who was guest of honour in the front row.

The collection celebrated English dandyism, as personified by the subject of the song, the famously gay exile Quentin Crisp, and indeed the showman Galliano himself.

He opened with a Savile Row sequence, a chalk-striped three-piece suit with jaunty trilby, a waiter's halterneck waistcoat over a big white shirt and tight black trousers, and pants in men's suiting held up by black braces over a skimpy white vest.

For evening he glammed up the sharply-tailored suits with silver thread.

Designs for dandies were interspersed with feminine, high gloss American chic, like his pearl grey slippery satin wrap-around frock dusted with silver, his monochrome leaf-printed silk tea dress and jade cheongsam. He even casually mixed the two, pairing a white frock coat over mini petticoat in coffee and cream lace.

His two favourite prints were leopardskin and zebra, used in everything from glamorous trench coat and fox-trimmed evening capes with matching clutch bags to satin kimonos, lace-edged baby dolls and slip dresses with crystal-beaded fringes.

Source: AFP

Paris Fashion Week spring/summer 08

Vivienne Westwood adds a little kinky
Vivenne Westwood, the eccentric grande dame of British fashion, came out on the catwalk after her show in one of her own raunchy creations, proving that you do not need to be young or a model size zero to look good in her clothes.

Marilyn Monroe's hourglass figure was one of the key inspirations for her collection, as ever liberally dosed with some sexually provocative "kinky" numbers, as she called them.

Dresses were almost sculptured, with strangled waists, pointed breasts like Gaultier's famous cones for Madonna, and fabric pinned up behind to exaggerate the posterior.

Pants were wide over the hips and tapered to the ankle, very 1950s, while narrow jackets had big lapels and stiff peplums and sleeves scrunched up to the elbow.

Models looked slovenly with their hair coming unpinned, wearing miniscule shorts and fringed pelmet skirts with knee-high socks.

Source: AFP