Balmain autumn/winter 2010/11 collection

By Hilary Alexander, Fashion Director at Paris Fashion Week Published: 5:02PM GMT 04 March 2010

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Christophe Decarnin, the French engineer at Balmain, re-created a complicated "Court of Versailles" with a stone n hurl beat, at Paris Fashion Week.

The collection, from the man who combined the cult of jeans costing �1,000-plus, took ready-to-wear imprudence to new extremes of opulence.

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Fuschia fox jackets came with perfect sheer shirts and sprayed-on, black tanned hide leggings, with black satin, ribbon-laced, stiletto booties. Gold and flush brocade, or leopard-print frock-coats surfaced sequinned trousers.

Dresses, in bullion leather, bullion beading and bullion sequins, plunged to the navel, stopped short at the swim suit line, or were slashed to the thigh a sure-fire gamble for the Oscars red carpet. Others, with a cowgirl twist, were fringed in festive chain-mail.

The show was a chaotic march of dash, peep and lots of money - as 34 models, prolonged of leg and all with prolonged blonde hair - raced around the catwalk to a brew of Prince hits, smiling and preening as they held glimpses of themselves in the mirrored walls of the Grand Hotels ballroom.

The show captivated a frenzy of paparazzi and a trade jam of limousines, decanting the brands rich customers and who have towering this once asleep "dowager" French tag to the tallness of "if-youve-got-it-flaunt-it" chic.

I sat subsequent to a customer, awash with diamonds, who was most in enjoyment as each see appeared.

The collection, notwithstanding the resources of lead overload, did have the solemn moments, as in black and grey pinstripe trouser suits, albeit, ragged with see-through, pussycat-bow blouses. The models, too, were fresh-faced, rather than the smoky-eyed, bedroom-haired "dolls" customarily compared with the Balmain glam-rock excess.

"I proposed from a standpoint of exemplary French couture, similar to a Cardin coupler and trousers from 1970; all really superb - and afterwards I changed to the Court of Versailles," Decarnin said, backstage.

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