South Africa Daily

Louis Vuitton brought Paris Fashion Week to a close with a novel catwalk gimmick on Tuesday, building a replica of the pipes and scaffolding exterior of the Pompidou modern art centre within the heart of the Louvre.

Vuitton, originally a luggage maker now famed for its handbags, is one in a stable of LVMH-owned brands that put on lavish shows in recent days.

Others include Givenchy and Celine, a label which the luxury goods conglomerate is investing in heavily as it expands into menswear too under new designer Hedi Slimane.

Vuitton’s womenswear designer Nicolas Ghesquiere has stamped a futuristic slant on the brand’s look since the start of his tenure in 2014.

His latest collection carried on that trend, with an urban, punk vibe in parts and flashbacks to the 1980s, with bold shoulders and jarring colours.

Film stars from Sienna Miller and Emma Roberts to Justin Theroux hogged the front row, watching models walk past the Centre Pompidou-style multi-coloured plumbing pipes that contrasted with the classical exterior, inside a grand courtyard of the Louvre museum.

Highlights over the last nine days of Paris fashion week – which closes a month of shows that ran through New York, London and Milan – included the catwalk extravaganzas at Kering’s Saint Laurent, which showcased disco-worthy glow-in-the-dark dresses on a runway under the Eiffel Tower.

 (Reporting by Sarah White and Eile Ni Chianain Editing by Peter Graff)