Hairy moments at the Paris slaughter show

Animals and us: Fur claws its way back onto the catwalk

TAMSIN BLANCHARD

Paris

Jean-Louis Scherrer presented the audience attending its haute couture show yesterday with a blood bath of fox and mink.

The show opened to a high-pitched Star Trek music score and three super troupers dressed in dazzling white satin, with jackets in fox, Mongolian lamb and sheered mink. Bernard Perris, who designs the collection, was making an attempt at being futuristic.

But remove the fur collars, the huge halo fur hats and the matching muffs which doubled as handbags, and you were still left with the sort of clothes that give haute couture a bad name.

Spiky heels and leather gauntlet gloves with shiny fringing in what looked like splinters of daggers were so aggressive that even if the model was not dragging a medley of dead animals behind her, she would look as if she was a member of the secret police. Even the make up was fearsome.

While the music swelled to a crescendo, blood-red fox furs were paraded before an audience, many of whom could not quite believe what they were seeing. Even the feathers which sometimes took the place of fur looked like they had been plucked from birds of prey.

A velvet cocktail dress with a zigzag of chiffon running like lightning up the front of it - one of the rare fur-free moments - looked like one of the costumes worn in the Latin American section of Come Dancing.