alighting; Paris haute couture is a timeless exemplar of dizzying craftsmanship and beauty.

Byline: Sally Singer

It was raining heavily in Paris, the pebbled paths of the Parc de Saint-Cloud were turning to mud, and my Dior snakeskin gladiators were sinking into the ground. Like every other guest come to see Chanel's fall couture show, I was escorted to the orangerie by a man holding up an umbrella. This saved me from getting drenched but not from wondering why anyone would want to go ahead with a fashion extravaganza outdoors, a million miles from anywhere, in a downpour. There was a canopy over the runway and the shallow bleachers on which we onlookers sat, but a faint air of excessiveness, even pointlessness, clung to the proceedings, stirring one's darkest fear about haute couture: that it forms a kind of oxbow lake to the mainstream of fashion, and indeed to good sense. Then the show started. It was brilliant; it was directional; it even explained the rain.

Karl Lagerfeld offered a full wardrobe-suits, coats, dresses, and evening-united by a slim, dramatically linear silhouette, where volume, instead of being on the front (where it was a year ago, everywhere) or at the back (this year), was subtly on the sides. Encrusted in stones, dotted with pearls, stripped in leather, disturbed by gores and gussets and other dimensional tricks, the side seams most of all drew out those verticals in a woman's body that are so often obscured. There was a slither of black silk with shimmering silver racing stripes; a monastic tweed tunic with matching hood edged in wild avian fronds; a long sequined sheath with a floor-length feathered tabard, lined in a splatter of black and white sequins. But the most important and inspiring idea of all was a tiny, corseted jacket shape with a three-quarter sleeve and a stiff peplum. It looked so modern and, from a house synonymous with the boxy jacket, so fresh. It also illuminated Lagerfeld's genius for translating something historical-in this case, a water-resistant early-eighteenth-century riding jacket that he found at auction-into a fully modern idiom. The riding jacket hung in the Chanel atelier on Rue Cambon in the weeks before the show. Too miniature to be worn by anyone-size 0 must have struck Bourbons as positively enormous-it served as an example of exactly what good design can achieve: beauty and utility that retain their relevance for centuries. Lagerfeld's brilliant trick was to take seriously the utilitarian element. He may not have waterproofed his boucles, but by producing a shape that is wearable for so many ages, he lowered a ladder from the haute tower of couture to the street below. This is, I've always thought, one of the characteristics of exceptional couture. Lagerfeld gave us a kicker, too (almost literally): a classic black court shoe on a moderate heel that you almost felt like mugging the models for. It was the strongest argument in ages for the return of the feminine foot, and it made clothes and their wearers look supremely well balanced. Sure, my gladiators were great, but like all statement-making shoes of late, their job was to keep earthbound my wafty jersey tee dress. Chanel's new pumps, on the other hand, were a starting point for a refined, graceful line that suddenly seems irresistible.

It was not only Chanel that was instructive as well as magical. John Galliano for Christian Dior's show, staged at another orangerie (Versailles, no less), presented a ...