KEY POINTS:
In case anyone had doubts, Paris is still the week for serious fashion. The epicentre of big-money business, the city that sets the trends holds the Fashion Week which features so many important shows you need pages to write about them all.
The most headline-grabbing shows included Alexander McQueen's dark and sexy homage to witches after he discovered that one of his ancestors was involved in the Salem trials, Jean Paul Gaultier's Scottish-influenced parade, during which models did a Celtic jig in oversized plaids and tartans, and the strange, smoke-emitting hole that opened at the end of Hussein Chalayan's runway while girls in odd, inflatable hats went by.
But probably the cause of most fashion chat was the Viktor & Rolf show where the poor terrified models teetered around, their feet shod in big wooden clogs and their skinny shoulders burdened by aluminium structures holding miniature spotlights.
Then there were the labels with clothes one actually wanted to wear - Stella McCartney, Lanvin, Chloe and an incredibly beautiful Galliano show - plus the arty and interesting, labels like Comme Des Garcons, Yohji Yamamoto and Ann Demeulemeester.
Probably the most trend-setting offerings came from Balenciaga, where designer Nicolas Ghesquiere did his version of Boho-meets-futurism, and Martin Margiela, where the focus was on an exaggerated inverted triangle silhouette in monotones with occasional neon brights.
