Paris fashion week’s spectacular finish at the Louis Vuitton show

Paris fashion week ended today in spectacular style with the Louis Vuitton show, which took place in the new museum of contemporary art, Fondation Louis Vuitton in the Bois de Bologne.

The iceberg inspired glass building by celebrated Canadian American architect Frank Gehry, now 85, opens to the public on October 27th and is considered the most outstanding work of architecture seen in the Paris capital since the Pompidou Centre and IM Pei’s pyramid at the Louvre.

Like sails in full wind, its construction was similar to that used in supersonic aircraft and involved 3,600 glass panels and 15,000 tonnes of steel.

The show opened against the soundtrack of Simon and Garfunkel’s “Sound of Silence,” which set the tone of the many 60s references in the collection that followed.

High necked white mini dresses in intricately worked leather and jeans printed with car, hairdryer and headphone motifs were light-hearted in spirit while trouser suits in multicoloured velvet captured some of the youthful mood of the 70s reinvented for a new generation.

Being Vuitton, leather featured not just in the high boots with their angled heels and bags like tiny Vuitton trunks, but in striped mini skirts and dresses in brick, yellow and black leather.

With a nod to the everyday street uniform of many urban capitals, jeans predominated, sharply cut with neat jackets or peacoats.

But it was the building that stole the show.

Bernard Arnault, owner of Louis Vuitton and France's richest man, may be blurring the lines between art and commerce, but at the Alexander McQueen show in the Republican Guard, two huge white painted bronze sculptures of orchids by Marc Quinn dominated the catwalk.

Sarah Burton drew inspiration from her collection of antique kimonos conveyed in the collection’s floral motifs, marquetry leather and high Perspex heeled sandals.

Colours were as strong as the shapes – black leather trouser suits with bold red and white motifs were worn with high gladiator sandals.

But will harnessed dresses and wide capes over flares make it to the high street for summer?