The bold and the beautiful

Chanel designer Karl Lagerfeld delighted haute couture’s new breed of deep-pocketed customer with a collection just like them – young, modern and in many cases Asian.
Boyish, spiky-haired models wore hats perched on the back of their heads, cycling shorts and flat sandals with ribbons tied in a bow around the ankle.
Bags with long straps were slung around the body like school satchels.
Lagerfeld drew inspiration for his collection from one of the pioneers of modern architecture, Le Corbusier.
In the early 1930s, the architect created a terrace at his apartment overlooking the Champs-Elysees with an outdoor fireplace and a mirror set against a concrete wall.
Cue Lagerfeld’s latest fashion extravaganza with a set inside Paris’s Grand Palais that was all sharp lines and big white walls.
Huge panelled doors at either end of the catwalk slid open to reveal two Le Corbusier-style mirrors above 18th-century mantelpieces.
For autumn/winter 2014/15, Lagerfeld sent out a string of memorable looks featuring playful skirts, pointed shoulders, fur necklines and heavy embroidery that created a rich, baroque effect.
“I liked the idea of baroque elements and modern touches. Le Corbusier’s apartment was a famous place for that,” Lagerfeld said after the show.
For the finale, Lagerfeld added a dramatic touch taken from Chinese history, delighting guests from Asia who made up a significant part of the crowd.
Models moved in formation from opposite ends of the set, crossing in the middle, as if the Terracotta Army had been brought to life.
Lagerfeld then took to the catwalk with a pregnant model in a bridal gown.
Jennifer Lopez, meanwhile, provided the star power earlier in the week as designer Donatella Versace kicked off the six days of haute couture catwalk shows.
The Italian designer sent out opulent blue fur coats, voluminous silk ball gowns and gold-buckled corsets in what she called a celebration of “construction and deconstruction”.
In a string of a asymmetrical looks, jackets and trousers were cut away to one side while one skirt was slashed so high it revealed the model’s hip.
Plunging fronts and backs had thin strips of vinyl embroidered on transparent fabric to create graphic shapes.
Lopez, wearing a strapless white gown, posed with Versace on the steps of the Paris Chamber of Commerce and Industry near the Champs-Elysees where the show was held.
French designer Fred Sathal was fashionably late for her return to Paris couture after an absence of eight years.
Sathal’s “colour light” show got the couture collections off to a sparkling start after a 50 minute delay.
The designer used beading and embellishments to create a swishing, shimmering effect, especially on mini-dresses with heavily-fringed hems.
A recurring fabric used in trousers, coats and kaftan dresses was inspired by an artist’s paint palette.
And Sathal did not shy away from fur with one supremely over-the-top cape made entirely from fox tails.
Christian Dior designer Raf Simons on Monday took Paris fashion on a journey through history with a haute couture collection in which Edwardian coats and bodices met flapper dresses and space suits.
Always a highlight of Paris fashion, guests arriving for the show were invited to walk along a pale grey carpet laid down the centre of the museum’s rose garden lined by manicured lawns.
At the end, a white, circular building looked a bit like a spacecraft ready for take-off. A small door led inside to a mirror-lined room with walls covered floor-to-ceiling in white flowers.
For Simons’ fifth season since taking over in the wake of flamboyant John Galliano’s sacking, the Belgian designer said he went in search of modernity: looking back in order to look forward.
“I was interested in the process of finding something extremely modern through something very historical,” he said.
“What I was attracted to was... how the foundations of one era are based on another, how the future is based on the past.”
Along with Dior’s own archive of designs, the collection was also influenced by 18th-century “court coats”, big skirts and 1920s loose flapper dresses.
The result was embroidered silk jumpsuits, wool coats with rounded shoulders and oversized cape-like collars and jackets with pleated backs.
Simons kept mostly to a palette of pale green, pink, off-white, black and navy. But there were bold colours too, such as an electric-blue embroidered silk dress and a bright-red wool jacket.
Simons’ has repeatedly focused on the theme of modernity in recent collections.
His collection from last July, featuring multicultural influences such as African beading, was described as a step away from the fashion house’s characteristic French style.
Earlier this year, Simons spoke of not wanting to “force a look” on women and of making sure they could wear his clothes and still kick off their heels and go dancing.
Haute couture had become “something women were watching... as a spectacle, the way you go to the theatre”, he said, adding that he wanted to reconnect it “more with the way of living”.
    Worn exclusively by the world’s richest women, haute couture exists only in Paris.
It is a legally protected appellation subject to strict criteria, such as the amount of work carried out by hand, the limited number of pieces and the size of a house’s workforce.