Galliano’s Old Master extravaganza at Paris Couture Week

No one expected the exuberant British designer John Galliano to acknowledge the world economic recession, and he did not defy expectations with Dior’s spring/summer collection (pictured) at Paris Couture Week on Monday.

Billed as "More Dior than Dior", Galliano presented a collection of exquisitely-tailored gowns based on the paintings of the Old Masters, lavish and colourful affairs that breathed opulence and summoned the spirit of Marie Antoinette. The Independent's fashion writer, Carola Long, was impressed: "The floral edging of several of the dresses had an aristocratic feel – as if the wearer had successfully made a fairy-tale dress out of the curtains in her chateau ... a sartorial solution for those couture clients whose finances aren't recession proof after all."

In the Daily Telegraph, Jess Cartner-Morley marveled at Galliano's "sexy, upbeat modern spin" on the Old Masters, but said that it owed more to "Scarlett Johansson's [film] Girl With A Pearl Earing" than Rembrandt himself.

And according to Sidney Toledano, the president and chief executive of Dior, there were plenty of buyers for the gowns, which begin at around £50,000. He told Women's Wear Daily that couture sales had bucked the downward trend, and had seen "double-digit growth," because Galliano had returned to "really interpreting the Dior codes and the Dior cuts". ·