Gaga meets Atelier Versace Sprig/Summer Couture 2014

Grace Jones and Lady Gaga provide inspiration for Donatella Versace's Paris Haute Couture show with flesh-flashing red carpet gowns.

Paris Couture Week opened with Donatella Versace's regular tribute to The Goddess. 

Officially, Grace Jones was the muse.

Gaga turned up early, sporting a duplicate sparkly, black hood from next season's collection.

Sculpted, draped and contoured, Versace's floor length silk jersey dresses were an interesting clash of approaches. From the neckline down these gowns, some slashed, some plunging, others semi-transparent, became progressively more daring. Smothered with Swarovski crystals, slashed or wafty, in the grand Versace tradition, all of them defined the waist - and any other feminine curve worth highlighting.

“I was thinking of a woman who is powerful but also feminine and soft – a contemporary goddess. I love the couture – you can really have fun with it. The budgets are bigger so you can let your imagination run a bit,” said Donatella.

Chanel Haute Couture Spring/Summer 2014: TRAINERS are ON

TRAINERS took to the couture catwalk for the second time this week as Karl Lagerfeld gave his seal of approval to the current sports-streetwear and showed us a Chanel collection fit for the most sophisticated of skater girls.

“I never want anyone to wear anything that they don’t want to wear but I think this is a very sophisticated way to dress,” declared Karl after the show.

Jewelled knee pads, bumbags and elbow guards aside. he began the collection with the standard set of Chanel feathered and jewelled tweeds but cut so that jackets were cropped and skirts were low on the hip and the waist itself became clearly defined like the neck of a vase. It through contrasting pastel candy shades to those of the rest of the outfit; sequins later on for a run of Black Swan gowns with feathers darting from them in every direction.
Since Coco Chanel can justifiably claim to have been the first designer to incorporate sporty elements with her jersey dresses and cardigan jackets in the 1920's, it seems only logical for Karl Lagerfeld to take himself and us to the track and field every so often, especially since he has such a talent for cross fertilising apparently contradictory genres.

Cara Delevingne – who also opened the show - made for the Chanel bride, complete with her own little page boy, Hudson Kroenig, to hold her train.

  

vogue.co.uk