McCartney in a playful take on tailoring

Models present creations by British fashion designer Stella McCartney for her spring-summer 2009 ready-to-wear collection in Paris yesterday. Photograph: Jacques Brinon/AP Inset: Bridal wear at the Oxfam Bridal shop on George's Street in Dublin.
Photograph: Aidan Crawley

AGAINST A huge backdrop by British artists Dinos and Jake Chapman inspired by children's colouring books, Stella McCartney's collection yesterday in Paris was a playful take on men's tailoring but with a strong feminine focus.

Given her company's healthy profit growth from £180,000 to over £1 million for the year ending December 2007, this is one designer capable of riding out the recession and her confidence showed. A proud Sir Paul McCartney was a front-row guest.

Her oversized, elongated masculine jackets with dropped or overlapping revers came in soft nursery shades of shell pink or apricot, their plunging cleavages revealing sheer tulle vests of opalescent sequins.

Shoulders were wide, but fabrics lightweight and in a season where light-reflecting yarns have given a sparkle to many collections, trouser suits in stiff blue shantung silk had a steely sheen with the same fabric used for a cutaway waistcoat and shorts.

Other familiar "boyfriend" items like trenchcoats were deconstructed or exaggerated, but with a casual, easygoing air.

Some lovely items in evening wear included a striking laser-cut Perspex dress hand-dyed for a degrade effect, fluid shifts in smokey silks and a graphic black and white trouser suit that was pure rock 'n' roll.

Comme des Garçons show, held in total darkness with only strobe lighting and a strange samba beat accompanying the catwalk parade, was a futuristic fashion statement from visionary Japanese designer Rei Kawakubo.

Kawakubo's models, with their huge white hairdoes like spun sugar and inflated hexagonal black leather armour, seemed

to display all the ways such dark honeycombs could be moulded geometrically around the body.

When white-faced models shrouded head to toe in black vinyl with football shaped hoods and plastic capes emerged like winged insects into the gloom, the effect was eerie.

After that, back to front jackets with rosette fronts, a signature Comme des Garçons motif, seemed almost familiar and everyday.

This article appears in the print edition of the Irish Times