Paris Fashion Week opened yesterday, starting a 10-day schedule that will see more than 70 runway presentations of women's ready-to-wear collections for next spring.
Still the epicentre of world fashion and where more buyers and press converge than anywhere else, the French catwalks are what drive modern fashion forward. Alber Elbaz at Lanvin, Stefano Pilati at YSL and Nicolas Ghesquiere at Balenciaga are amongst the most influential designers of the new generation and their designs are widely copied.
YSL's tulip skirt last season, for example, went straight from the catwalks to the streets.
Paris attracts a wide multicultural mix. At Ungaro and Celine, new designers will be making their debuts this week and the Lebanese Elie Saab, who first came to world attention with a dress for Halle Berry at the Oscars, will be staging his first complete ready-to-wear collection. In addition, Antonio Berardi, the talented British designer of Sicilian background, will be having his first Paris show.
Tomorrow, an exhibition celebrating 40 years of the "le smoking" tuxedo suit made famous by Yves St Laurent in l966 will open at the Pierre Berge/Yves St Laurent Fondation, while the new face of Dior, actress Sharon Stone, will be announced at tomorrow night's show in the Grand Palais.
The only Irish name on the calendar and one of the few independent designers on the fixed schedule, Tyrone-born Sharon Wauchob presented her collection in the l7th-century Chapelle des Petits Augustins in the École des Beaux Arts.
It is a very beautiful venue but it is to close for renovations for several years. Wauchob's collection, "Regatta Rock", was her most feminine and graceful to date, with chiffons and silks of almost ethereal lightness counterpointing the slouchy Oxford bags worn with jewelled belts slung across the hips.
Her familiar details were there, the swagged hems and the flying panels, but there was a sweetness and lightness of touch to an empire-line black chiffon dress with swinging ribbons and more than a hint of a hip modern milkmaid to a white lace bodice undone over a softly draped skirt.
Dresses were central to the collection, in black, white or watery shades of blue or grey scattered with tiny jet beading.
Jewellery has always been integral to her work and a jewelled insignia worn like a breastplate over a thinly layered dress juxtaposed delicate silks and heavy metal.
"I have gone a little further into femininity yet keeping a rock attitude," she told The Irish Times. "There is a return to elegance and cleanness in design, but you cannot lose modernity."
Her less expensive knitwear Collection K range (sold in Arnotts) has been successful internationally and she has also developed a new luxury denim "segment" in Japan that was recently launched in New York.
Her next step is to move into shoes, another development she will no doubt take in her stride.