Those who queued to stand at the Rochas show in the Tuileries Gardens in Paris yesterday were rewarded with a collection of outstanding beauty.
Olivier Theyskens is a young Belgian with a clear vision of modern dressing, alternating skinny pants suits, carelessly worn, with wide, ballgown skirts and tiny jackets in cotton or linen cleverly reinventing evening wear shapes for day.
There was a certain Edwardian severity and elegance captured in a long skirt of dove grey organdie with demure cap-sleeved white blouse. The cap sleeve and high neck were recurring motifs whether on long, figured dresses, loosely tied at the back, or on embroidered blouses. It was a collection that drew from the past in its shapeliness, yet was modern.
Long skirts appeared again at the Dries Van Noten show in the half-lit sculpture hall of the École des Beaux Arts where the designer sent out moody models in biscuit-coloured duster coats tied over long skirts and tent dresses, to the accompaniment of Sting's Every Breath You Take.
Van Noten goes his own way season after season with his love of handwork and ethnic dress, layering tunics and pleated smocks over shorts or peasant skirts and anchoring them with embroidered waistbands.
Fabrics included kimono prints, Regency stripes and modern gold metallic brocades all harnessed into those easy combinations that have ensured a loyal fan base among women not slaves to current trends.
Stella McCartney means slouchy jumpers and rock 'n' roll trouser suits and her show offered men's shirts in cold blue cotton worn as dresses along with supersharp black jump suits and strapless corset sheaths, the stuff of hip city dressing.
A glassy black metallic trenchcoat was serious glamour for a wet day and she wrested Sloaney snaffle and chain prints from county scarves into a sexier life in baby doll dresses with studded leather boleros. Devil-may-care blouson knits were par for the course.
For evening, floor-length dresses in chiffon were overprinted with images in summery colours from paintings by US artist and sculptor Jeff Koons.