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The couture shows in Paris are basically the best excuse any fancy designer can have to go crazy with a dress. They have to get permission to show on the official haute couture schedule but once they do, it's a no-holds-barred extravaganza with lashings of embroidery, sequins, ruffles, layers, ribbons and bows.
Some of these frocks require hundreds of hours and dozens of couture specialists to complete and they can cost up to a quarter of a million New Zealand dollars.
The eventual effect? Unlike the ready-to-wear shows the couture shows don't really produce a lot of trends for the average Aucklander to follow. And only a few hundred women in the world can afford these very expensive dresses.
But the couture shows are most valuable for publicity - the frocks are so amazing that magazines and newspapers all over the world run stories and pictures about these sartorial spectaculars, which means the design houses sell more of their peripheral products, such things as perfume, hosiery and other beauty products. It's all about image.
Last week in Paris, Dior designer John Galliano's image as the king of couture remained untarnished.
Somehow his incredibly creative pageant of brilliantly coloured clothes managed to mix current moods in fashion, with Galliano's witty, wild imagination, with just the sort of arty showstoppers that wealthy ball-goers want to wear.
Jean Paul Gaultier provided a similar spectacle, as he mined all manner of nautical imagery in a fantastical show featuring a live mermaid (model Coco Rocha with a tail) reclining on a rock as soap bubbles were blown around her, as well as sumptuous dresses trailing lilac seaweed and skirts made of gold scales. Amusingly, Gaultier's theme was "Little Mermaid says Hello Sailor".
While the star-studded social event of the week was Valentino's farewell bash - the designer retired after 45 years - elsewhere big names like Christian Lacroix, Elie Saab, Giorgio Armani and Karl Lagerfeld for Chanel presented gorgeous dresses, all ruffles, bows, pleats and careful structure, that - hmmm? - wouldn't look out of place at an overdressed 80s prom.
But you've got to remember most of the women who can afford to buy couture are older and probably quite like that look.
In terms of innovative fashion, possibly most exciting were the offerings by the relative newcomers to the couture season. In her second couture show, Anne Valerie Hash (whose ready-to-wear is stocked at Hepburn on Ponsonby Rd) proved herself a thoroughly modern couturier, with intricate layers of sheer fabric and extremely complicated pattern-making.
Going one better was young Italian designer Ricardo Tisci, who's been creative director at Givenchy for several seasons now but has only just started winning praise from fashion pundits.
His show was all about what he called the Gothic Ballerina and featured such innovative delights as a tutu made of softest emu feathers beneath a pale mint military-style coat; avant-garde pleats in shiny, white above skinny trousers and wild whorls of Elizabethan ruffles-meets-origami-lantern atop long dresses.
Tisci's front row audience included hip, It girl, Lou Doillon, who's just the sort of woman to carry these looks off, as well as design legend Yohji Yamamoto, who hardly ever goes to fashion shows but who told journalists that he found Tisci's work refreshing. Clearly time to keep an eye on the house of Givenchy.
