Lacroix bids au revoir to LVMH with a display of pure fantasy

With its hot colours, dramatic volumes and baroque details, the show was a suitable spectacle to mark the end of a chapter in the 18-year career Christian Lacroix.

With its hot colours, dramatic volumes and baroque details, the show was a suitable spectacle to mark the end of a chapter in the 18-year career Christian Lacroix.

Only minutes after the French designer received a standing ovation for his spring-summer haute couture collection in Paris, LVMH announced that the loss-making label had been sold to the US investment company Falic Group.

Lacroix put a brave face on the deal. "It's just a tag that is changing, I think the inside of the house will not change," he said. "I like question marks. I think it is happening in all the houses, because this is a very exciting time for redefining luxury, a new approach to fashion."

The designer, whose contract expires in March, said he would hold discussions with the Falic Group, but he expected to stage his next ready-to-wear display in March as scheduled.

Despite the uncertainty, Lacroix pulled out all the stops. The final sequence of dramatic taffeta gowns, gathered into voluminous folds and sent out in searing shades of saffron, neon yellow and iridescent pink, represented the pure fantasy of haute couture.

Meanwhile, Karl Lagerfeld underscored the decadent and peculiarly French character of haute couture fashion by showing his spring-summer 2005 collection for Chanel yesterday on a catwalk designed to look like a formal garden at Versailles Palace. The theme was a confident gesture from fashion's Sun King. The perfectly tailored skirt suits were paraded around a fountain that spurted water from two giant interlocking C's - the famous house logo - and black foam trees that bloomed white camellias. That flower and the monochrome palette are house symbols introduced by Gabrielle "Coco" Chanel.

Such a clearly codified brand image is a valuable marketing tool and Chanel is well versed in the art of global promotion. Chanel is also one of the few remaining haute couture houses that can claim to do brisk business in its made-to-measure, hand-stitched frocks and suits. While many runways this week have been dominated by showstopping dresses destined for little beyond the red carpet, Chanel's tweed suits, in palest pink with a girlish pleated skirt and soft jacket with abbreviated sleeves, were a reasonably practical proposition.

The show did, however, close with glamorous eveningwear. Another Coco invention from the 1920s, the little black dress, also appeared, in a flared and fluid A-line of silk chiffon, or in tiers of black tulle and Chantilly lace.

Those who actually invest in a haute couture suit from the brand were treated to their very own show, which was staged inside a large hall at Ateliers Berthier.

Chanel is in bullish spirits away from the catwalk too. The company unveiled a new store/skyscraper in Tokyo last month with a façade designed to imitate the signature wool bouclé tweed.