Gaultier seduces haute couture with cool urban designs

Guests were seated in sections labelled Budapest, Presborg, Hongrie and so forth at Jean Paul Gaultier's haute couture collection shown in Paris yesterday – an early pointer to the Eastern European opulence to come.

In an interior draped in off-white tulle, its golden chandeliers weighed down by fur throws, and to the strains of a Strauss waltz, romance was, most definitely, in the air.

The first looks out were masculine, however. Gaultier is famous for playing with traditional notions of gender: this is, of course, the designer who put men in skirts.

An oversized grey cashmere overcoat, teamed with wide-legged black trouser suit looked the height of luxury – as if the girl wearing it had lost her lover but was wrapping herself in his warm clothes instead. Next came the manly contrasted with the plain girlie – more roomy trouser suits and coats but teamed with the prettiest lingerie in the kind of soft pink your granny used to wear.

Like modern Eastern European princesses, the models paraded out in the finest, most intensely coloured eveningwear of the week so far. Erin O'Connor in a huge plum satin bomber jacket heavily embroidered with exotic birds and long bright yellow velvet dress looked extraordinary. Naomi Campbell was resplendent with exotic blooms in her hair and wearing a blood-red rhinestone gown, dragging the longest, heaviest, thickest, bright orange mohair cardigan behind her. For those who would rather stick to black, a hussar jacket over a long dress, shadowed with organza (worn by Carla Bruni), was the height of simplicity and elegance – almost monastic in the purity of line.

Finally, the Dr Zhivago-esque mood wouldn't have been complete without huge amounts of fur. Gaultier loves fur and this time round used it to line overcoats, to craft tunics and to edge everything from jackets to cardigans.

This was the most beautiful collection: like a huge trunk of clothes had been discovered in the attic of a Russian Tsarina but entirely cool and urban at the same time. It was also quintessentially French in its grandeur as might be expected of one the last great Gallic designers. Gaultier is now honoured with the closing slot at the twice-yearly haute couture – formerly this has always belonged to Yves Saint Laurent. If yesterday's offering was anything to go by, he's more than man enough for the job.