Marc Jacobs in defiant mood at Paris Fashion Week

There had been much comment about designers' creativity being stifled by the credit crunch during Paris Fashion Week, but yesterday, on the last day of the pret-a-porter shows, Louis Vuitton's American designer Marc Jacobs offered a defiant two fingers to the global downturn and pervading gloom. His 2009 autumn/winter collection drew its inspiration from 19th Century Paris and even offered a nod to the greatest recession denier of them all, old let-them-eat-cake Marie Antoinette.

Drinking the luxury in from the front row were (pictured above from right) actresses Cecile Cassel and Louise Bourgoin, Louis Vuitton communications director Antoine Arnault, actress Virginie Ledoyen, Louis Vuitton chairman Bernard Arnault, his wife Helene and model Milla Jovovich.

Wrote Carolyn Asome in the Times: "If most of Paris was in sombre mood or stuck in an Eighties time warp, Jacobs went for sensory overload. From the triumphant clashes of electric pink and blue in the lace-corseted Baroque minidresses, this was more than a fleeting tribute to Marie Antoinette."

"Jacobs has always loved a good party dress and they were here in abundance," wrote Hadley Freeman in the Guardian, "but done with Vuitton's plushness: the hot pink mini might look like something a girl would wear to her 21st, but the luxurious fabric and cut suggested that the only 21-year-old able to afford it would have been a Madoff granddaughter last year."

Meanwhile, Roland Mouret, a great favorite of Victoria Beckham, took an opposing, frugal approach. "To use a culinary metaphor," said Freeman, "Mouret is carefully subsisting on gruel and water while Jacobs is gobbling down truffles and asking why everyone else can't just eat cake."

She found this approach infinitely sensible - as if that's what you want at a fashion show. Said Freeman: "How many cocktail parties will anyone be able to throw, let alone dress for? So in his show yesterday, although there were certainly plenty of dresses, the emphasis was on simple and very commercial separates, with tunic dresses doubling as tops (very economically-minded), jagged jackets and dresses in grey, taupe or deep raspberry."
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