Abstraction

Marie Antoinette, the ill-fated last queen of France, once declared that she wanted to be the most fashionable woman in the world.

The world is a much wider place in 2014 than it was in 1789, when cherie Marie was carted off to the Conciergerie and uncertain doom. But, with the latest round of spring/summer 2015 shows, Paris is asserting its reign across the world of la mode.

Nobody - and nowhere, it seems - does it better.
Why? Because Paris is bubbling with ideas. Some we�ll want to wear - like much of Phoebe Philo�s spring C�line collection, with its ruffled and printed pastoralism and fringy-frayed craftiness. Others, we won�t, at least not so readily.
Rei Kawakubo�s formidable Comme des Garcons show, inspired by �blood and roses� and transforming her models into perambulating contemporary art http://www.pcs-systems.co.uk/Images/celinebag.aspx installations drenched in single shades of riding-hood red, was aggressively, anarchically unwearable

Front row at Paris Fashion Week spring/summer 201
And who knows what will end up in shops from Jean Paul Gaultier�s show on Saturday night, his last ever ready-to-wear collection after 39 years in the game? It was a great show - staged as a beauty pageant, of mostly greatest hits. Both were bold statements

The clothes didn�t really matter
The clothes matter, enormously, at C�line. Last year the brand made record sales and while its owner Bernard Arnault�s LVMH conglomerate does not release information on their labels� individual returns, the performance was described by the group as �remarkabl

That�s based on Phoebe Philo�s knack of nailing what women want to we

It�s legendary: her latest successor at Chloe, Clare Waight Keller, is still somewhat in the shadows of Philo�s phenomenal success sto
. The floaty georgette dresses, blouses and denim shorts were neat, but felt a little like left-overs from Philo�s glory years. Shoes oscillated between middling height and dead flat, which matched the mood of the show overa

Philo is a tough act to follow - even when she�s following herself. That�s because she�s lead the march into uncharted territories - her spring/summer 2010 C�line debut, for instance, which ignited a Minimalist revival in fashi
. Her spring offering was somewhat quieter, less bold and a little less fulfilli

Oddly, Marie Antoinette was who I thought about when the C�line models trod out in dropped flounces splurged with florals, fluttering lappets of fabric and tattered he
. Those have been seen just about everywhere: Celine took it a bit further, looping thread into a mammoth woolly fringe along the hems of skirts and slender to

They reminded me of la reine and her cohorts playing at milkmaids in her ferme orn�e. There were even a few cowbells clanging from bags, and string bel
. It chimed with the folksy, Seventies feel that has been emerging across the season as a whole - swaying fraying and billowy florals underlined by flared trousers and tugged-waist jackets stiffly outlined with topstitchi

Philo placed her own slant on it, sure. But rather than defining, this was a refining collection, underlining stories other designers had already begun to te
. From a queen of fashion, you hoped for more leadership.