In Paris and fit to be tied

Hollywood is used to paparazzi crushes but not like this. When Nicole Kidman arrived at the Chanel show Friday, a violent skirmish broke out. Photographers swallowed up the actress and her golden tendrils, knocking each other down to get the shot, as the audience witnessed the bloody spoils of celebrity culture spilled out in front of them.

But the horrifying scene, which played out again when Karl Lagerfeld plucked Kidman out of her seat for a runway victory lap, was apparently staged. (Kidman didn’t flinch when the flashbulb piranhas closed in.)

It was a case of life imitating art, imitating life. Kidman is the new face of Chanel No. 5, the fragrance that achieved legendary Hollywood status when Marilyn Monroe said it was the only thing she wore to bed. To promote the perfume, Kidman and “Moulin Rouge” director Baz Luhrmann have created a two-minute advertisement about a woman who flees the paparazzi and ends up in the arms of a stranger.

Lagerfeld rigged the runway to look like a red carpet. The game continued when Linda Evangelista, Naomi Campbell, Eva Herzigova and other supermodels of the 1990s opened the show wearing Oscar-worthy gowns and stopped to mug for the cameras.

A white minidress was caged in dazzling beads with a tasseled hem, and a simple sweep of a black velvet gown was finished with a jeweled “No. 5” lariat draped against a bare back. The denim skirt was glazed in gold for evening, with a matching navel-baring top, and a white, goddess gown swept the floor with a filigree train.

Daywear was just as magical. The classic tweed suit was updated with a full gypsy skirt. And a model in cropped leather pants and a black-and-white striped sweater recalled Brigitte Bardot in her St. Tropez days. Sandals came flat and beaded, or on stiletto heels with single oversized solitaires on the toes. The new “elephant heel,” with not one but two heels, resembled a pachyderm in profile, and the new bag was orb-shaped, a “Chanel pearl.”

Clearly, having a fragrance is an important piece of a successful fashion business. So it was no surprise that Viktor & Rolf (Dutch design duo Viktor Horsting and Rolf Snoeren) pulled out all the stops to launch their first scent, Flowerbomb. Ignoring the questionable taste of packaging perfume in a grenade-shaped bottle, the show was a knockout.

It began with a dark procession of models wearing motorcycle helmets and all manner of fierce black clothing -- a nylon bomber jacket with a rounded, puffed collar, a tank top with a prize-ribbon-like embellishment on the shoulder, a short-sleeve jacket dotted with bows and a gown with a stiff, looped ribbon collar and ribbon streamer skirt.

One by one, the faceless mannequins took their places on ladders at the top of the runway, creating a tableau vivant. Then bam! In a blaze of pyrotechnics, the set rotated. The flip side was a frisson of femininity in a thousand shades of pink. Ribbon curls traced the sleeves of a khaki safari jacket, and cascaded down the front of a ribbon print sundress.

For the piece de resistance, a model came out wrapped in a giant round Christmas bow. When the designing duo appeared in perfectly matched tuxedos, they looked like fashion moguls in the making. Bijan couldn’t have done it better himself.

Antwerp-based designer Dries Van Noten shirks the limelight, but that doesn’t mean he can’t put on a good show. To celebrate his 50th collection, he hosted a dinner party for 500 in an old boiler factory in a suburb of Paris. The table looked like a mirage, with 250 seats on either side of a white tablecloth that stretched as far as the eye could see, the crystal chandeliers, wine goblets and china plates precisely set to create a continuous line. No doubt offering the best service in Paris, 250 waiters marched out in single file, one for every two guests.

After dinner, the chandeliers were raised and the real show began, as the table became a runway. There were some beauties -- full, womanly skirts in a smudged green and coral floral, or black-and-white stripes, worn with simple white shirts, embroidered kimono jackets, wide-legged pants and raffia-heeled platform sandals laced up the foot and ankle. It was all perfectly in tune with spring’s eclecticism, though Van Noten has been doing it forever.

For a crowning touch, after the show, shelves were lowered over the table, and placed before each guest was an autographed copy of a book celebrating the designer’s career. Tucked inside was a Polaroid of the chandelier in front of which the guest had been seated.

At Stella McCartney, Gwyneth Paltrow, Harvey Weinstein and new Gucci Group President Robert Polet lent front-row support. But they couldn’t distract from the fact that the collection never got past the idea of a billowing sundress slipping off the shoulders to show a bare nipple. Parachute anoraks, batik-print Bermudas, ill-fitting bikinis that rode up the bum, and espadrilles with wood platforms were so lukewarm that the audience didn’t even need the battery-operated personal fans McCartney had attached to her invitations.

At Celine, Roberto Menichetti’s first show after replacing Michael Kors was awkward too. Try as he did, shrunken jackets decorated with crocodile paillettes, skirts with buttoned box pleats, jersey tops with scooped-out shoulders and minidresses in a harlequin print -- all in mismatched navy, black, yellow and lavender -- couldn’t evoke that happy feeling one has come to expect from the house’s spring collections.

Too far out

Designer Rick Owens was smart to move on from his bedraggled Goth phase, but he need not have gone so far out there. Dresses and tops sat away from the shoulders, with angular projectiles jutting out around the neckline. And then there were the bloomers, with spare skirts hanging down in front.

Draped, bias-cut silk dresses in coral and pink jersey were tucked and sewn to achieve intriguing asymmetrical shapes. But it was difficult to linger on the thought, with a pair of pale, skinny boys ambling about the runway in boxer shorts, Ziggy Stardust platform boots and ropes of white marabou feathers draped around their bare shoulders.

Even the models had trouble keeping a straight face.

Not so at Alexander McQueen, where 36 models arranged themselves as chess pieces on the runway. After facing each other to become opposing sides, they traded spaces with choreographed precision until a checkmate was declared.

The knights were encased in molded leather tops, with high, equine ponytails and horsehair skirts that swished as they walked, and the rooks were poured into motocross-inspired bodysuits. The rest of the chess references were more understated, but McQueen had plenty more themes, or ethnic diversities, as he described them in the show notes.

The British designer’s Savile Row tailoring was on view in velvet sailor jackets, worn with cropped navy pants and Mary Janes. He used the 1975 film “Picnic at Hanging Rock” as inspiration for Edwardian ticking-stripe skirts with padded hips, doll-like waists, and scalloped hems over white petticoats.

The folkloric was realized on a cream jacket with couture-like rose embroidery, and the Asian by a dress with carp embroidery. Proposing “redheads” as an ethnicity, he clothed one model in a sage green taffeta jacket with the stiff, round neckline that was so prominent in his fall collection. With lots of familiar silhouettes, this was a retrospective of sorts for McQueen. And no doubt he was commenting on the oddball industry so spectacularly laid out here over the last few days when he titled the collection “It’s Only a Game.”