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.