PARIS FASHION WEEK - DAY THREE

PARIS FASHION WEEK - DAY THREE

JOHN GALLIANO has a history of exploring different eras when designing his collections for Christian Dior; this season it was the late Fifties, just before Sixties fashion hit the world. Models with big hair waltzed down the runway to the iconic song Mrs Robinson from The Graduate for a show of geometric shapes, electric colours mixed with monochrome and bright prints.

At Maison Martin Margiela, the fashion house known for bowing against convention and re-defining trends, sexy heavy metal prevailed through all-in-one catsuits covered by netting-like capes, knee-high snakeskin boots, more wearable leopard-print tops and the funnel-neck coats that are becoming a big trend for autumn/winter 2008-9.

Fans of Yohji Yamamoto won't be disappointed with his autumn/winter 2008-9 offering. Showing his signature hard-versus-soft leather jackets with hard edges as well as his favoured full-skirts - this time rolled up at the waist - the designer embarked on his first collaboration with Hermes to create the portfolio bags that will no doubt be the It-bags of next season. To a soundtrack of none other than Yamamoto himself (he recorded himself playing guitar to play at the show), the collection had something to attract new as well as die-hard fans.

Last - but by no means least - at Vivienne Westwood, the designer enlisted the help of children from a school in Nottingham to provide the art-work for her collection. Back for autumn/winter 2008-9 with another political message, this time global-warming, the collection may have had a serious message but the clothes themselves were not. Overzized tartan coats, models on stilts wearing face paint and bright swirls of colour met makeshift helmets, scribbles on shift dresses and faux-fur coats. (February 26 2008, AM