Gaultier's art goes second-skin deep: Marion Hume watches as punk makes a fashion comeback on the Paris catwalk

JEAN PAUL Gaultier said 'Tattoo You' in a collection which mixed the real thing - these days, every model has at least one tattoo somewhere - with second-skin clothes to give the effect of head-to-toe body art. Also in evidence was body piercing - some real, some false - including nose rings (false) and bolts right through both nostrils (real).

Christy Turlington, who can command dollars 10,000 fees for modelling, and whose nose ring did not pierce her perfect nostrils, has a real tattoo but also appeared to have multi-pierced ears - an effect achieved just for the show. But Eve Salvail, who captured attention last season because she was bald with a tattooed dragon curling across her scalp, was something of a punk princess this time, with a new growth of white blonde hair plus metallic additions to all kinds of body parts.

Gaultier took punk as his theme, but unlike Gianni Versace in Milan and Karl Lagerfeld, who showed in Paris yesterday, he got it right. He took the tight trousers and the kilts, the real signatures of punk late Seventies-style, but he avoided the Mohicans.

Instead, Gaultier took punk on and in so doing made the look sweeter. Kilts, worn over trousers, were witty in City pinstripes, while shift dresses overlaid with gunmetal sequined impressions of the daring punk bra and micro-skirt somehow looked more like Joan of Arc.

There was also a nod to India - a recurrent theme at this season's international catwalk shows.

(Photographs omitted)