Marc Jacobs captures spirit of Paris fashion week with whiff of scandal

The best designers know that fashion is as much about capturing the zeitgeist as it is about dresses. Marc Jacobs, the designer of Louis Vuitton, presented an appropriately scandalous finale to a Paris fashion week riven by rumour and disgrace, with a collection inspired by fetish and a show themed around the "hookers, chambermaids, wives, mistresses and other exquisite creatures" whom Jacobs sees when he stays at Claridge's hotel in London.

The audience were seated around four ornate, gilded elevators, each manned by a uniformed bellboy. As the show began, the first lift opened and a model emerged dressed in a monogrammed chauffeur's cap and smartly buttoned jacket over a patent corset and a sheer skirt which revealed stockings beneath. The elevators descended out of sight and returned, each delivering a model in a fetishised, high-gloss fantasy of uniform: knee boots in sex-shop latex, tight trousers with the leather patches used on jodhpurs pulling the focus to the inner thigh and demure knee-length printed dresses embroidered with gloves, masks and high heels.

As the collection segued from daywear into evening wear, the uniform references shifted from bellboys and chauffeurs to French maids, with sheer black cocktail dresses bibbed with starched white collars and venetian masks worn in the hair as Alice bands. Last to appear was Kate Moss, who strode the catwalk in tight jacket, black knickers and boots, smoking a cigarette.

Backstage, Jacobs said the idea for this season's show came from Claridge's hotel in London. "Whenever I stay there, I see all these incredible women, coming and going in the morning and the afternoon and at night. I love looking at what they are wearing trying to guess who they're with – husbands, lovers, clients."

The starring role for Moss, and for other veteran models including Naomi Campbell, was part of the concept, because "rather than have all the girls be interchangeable, I wanted the show to have some newer models who are unknown and mysterious to us and then some women whose characters and beauty we know well, like Kate and Naomi."

"It was about fetish, but it wasn't dark," Jacobs insisted. Although some models had their wrists bound by handcuffs to their handbags, the cuffs were linked by fragile crystal beads instead of binding chains.

"At Vuitton, it always starts with the bags. I kept thinking about this inexplicable passion and obsession women have for bags, and how the bag becomes a fetishised object. I wanted to celebrate the love and desire that is part of that fetish," Jacobs said.

"We associate uniforms with fetish because uniforms suggest roles that require effort and commitment, whether that's a maid's dress or a dressage jacket."

Moss may have stolen the show, but the star of this collection will be the Lock It handbags. Classic, ladylike shaped bags were wrapped in teddy bear fur, making something intimate and unexpected out of a status symbol handbag. Handles were wrapped with buckles and a golden padlock and key was attached to each bag, emphasising how privacy and preciousness plays a role in women's relationship with their handbags.

The entire morning was staged as a piece of performance art. Backstage, models in Vuitton-monogrammed French maid outfits held trays of vodka shots and caviar-topped potatoes in one hand and chic, monochrome feather dusters in the other. Jacobs, dapper in a white shirt and black trousers, was wearing one of the venetian masks as a bow-tie. "It's a bit Notes on a Scandal, you know?" Jacobs was overheard to tell a friend who rushed to congratulate him, "which seems kind of appropriate."

The rumour mill went into overdrive once more when it was reported on Twitter that Riccardo Tisci, designer at Givenchy, had been confirmed as the new designer at Dior. Some sources have suggested that Carine Roitfeld, until recently the editor-in-chief of French Vogue, will be announced as a stylist at Dior alongside Tisci, and that the rising star Haider Ackermann is poised to replace Tisci at Givenchy. However, Dior denied any announcement was imminent. LVMH, the owners of Dior, also own Vuitton, and logic would suggest that they would not time an announcement about Dior so as to derail coverage of this blockbuster Vuitton show.

source: www.guardian.co.uk