Huge crowds outside Rodin museum in Paris for Dior show

Huge, chaotic crowds gathered outside the Rodin museum in Paris yesterday as celebrities, key global retailers and the city’s haute bourgeoisie arrived in their limousines to the Rue de Varenne for the Dior show.

Wisteria and delphiniumsThe set, a spectacular pleasure garden erected on scaffolding with garlands of wisteria and delphiniums cascading down, was a deliberate celebration of the artificial and the real, echoing the spirit of the collection, according to Raf Simons, creative head of Christian Dior.

The opening ensembles – taut black jackets spliced open at the side with printed silk shorts – had that mix of rigour and flou that is quintessentially French. The ice cream shades – sugar pink, ice blue and mint – were realised beautifully in featherlight knits and shorts or midi skirts, accentuated with dark crystal accessories. Pleating was used extensively and new dress shapes created with floating ribbons. New takes on the trench or tent-shaped jackets looked modern in metallic blues or pinks.

“I was thinking of a distinct new tribe of women in three categories: traveller, transformer and transporter,” said Simons. Some of the summer dresses, such as the striped racer-back number or chic shirt dress, stood out in this desirable, varied bouquet.

Crisp silhouettesThere was a lot of the artificial and the real in Issey Miyake’s collection, which played on the idea of the grid with crisp clean silhouettes in innovative fabrics for which the designer is renowned.

Punched man-made leather jackets in white or black were stiff and architectural but appealing in a fresh way.

Softer jackets and trousers were inset with mesh typical of the dynamic mix of loose, graceful shapes with more structured pieces that characterised the whole collection.

Roland Mouret, who once said that a dress was a tool “and a tool has to work”, sent out a collection that seemed directly inspired by that 1980s design phenomenon, the Memphis movement with its colourful décor and asymmetrical shapes. Graphic black-and-white leather, multicoloured patchwork dresses made strong statements, but why black x marks in patent as décor?