Lily Cole is Lacroix's living doll

Lily Cole

In an era when jeans and jumpers serve most of us perfectly well, it requires a suspension of disbelief to watch a gold brocade suit with a curvy onion-shaped skirt and matching gold shoes flounce down the catwalk.

But this is as close as Christian Lacroix ever comes to doing daywear.

Lacroix is often described as 'painterly' for his winning ways with colour, and last night's Paris show justified this description.

Entitled Scent Of A Woman, it conjured the brilliant hues of a French country garden in high summer. Vibrant rose, violet, peony and marigold shades were in plentiful supply - often in the same outfit.

Taking as a motif the carnation, his favourite flower, this modest bloom was worked through the whole collection, appearing as an oversized corsage on the lapel of a narrow jacket, as a fastening at the waist of a cocktail dress, or as a shoulder decoration on an asymmetric gown.

The extravagance soared to a climax with the Lacroix wedding gown, modelled by Torquay-born Lily Cole.