World of leather: fashion skin-deep for Chalayan

The British designer Hussein Chalayan offered a persuasive demonstration yesterday that avant-garde design can be deeply sexy. He took the idea of body-con clothing to a new level as he unveiled his latest collection at Paris Fashion Week, showing clingy dresses with brightly coloured leather panels moulded to the breasts and buttocks in an anatomical second skin.

The conceptual designer, who is being celebrated in an exhibition at the Design Museum in London, teamed micro-mini dresses and mid-thigh-length boots, fast emerging as the trend for next season, with leather suspenders. The collection, Earthbound, featured topographical and industrial prints and textures such as a grey foam-like, high-tech fabric which suggested concrete, and silky fabrics with prints that resembled contour maps, building materials, bricks and pavements.

There was none of the extreme theatrics of previous Chalayan shows – which have included dresses that change colour with electric lighting or mechanically transform themselves, such as the wooden table that became a tiered skirt – but the clothes provided plenty of drama in the form of oversized black blazer dress and jacket, cocoon coats and leather jackets.

There was an element of spectacle to several of the Paris shows – after all it was le weekend. Karl Lagerfeld kicked off Sunday morning in the Jardin des Tuileries by enlisting the electro-pop group Metronomy to open his own-label show. While the deadpan synthesised voices seemed as incongruous, the clothes struck a lean, dark note. Tailored pencil skirts and fitted, angular jackets in black, dark grey and red speckled tweed were worn over silky trousers that looked not dissimilar to running wear. Oversized, motorcycle helmet-style hats in fur and crystal added a quirky note.

Jean-Paul Gaultier can be relied upon for a spectacle, and his show on Saturday night certainly delivered one. Not only did it attract a large crowd of anti-fur protestors, but the French designer, who is also the Creative Director for Hermes, had set up a tableau vivant at the end of the catwalk with models posing in a nightclub scene and staging a mock fight. The presentation was about as subtle as an episode of 'Allo 'Allo, but the mood was light and the tailoring skilled.