New York City bike messengers, with their functional microfibre wind breakers in bright citrus shades, rode the catwalk at the Louis Vuitton show.
Menswear designer Paul Helvers sent out models in generously cut single-button jackets and cuffed shorts toting across-the-chest messenger bags in nubby leather. Models in dress shoes with heels capped in fluorescent rubber trod across a catwalk covered in black gravel that sparkled like asphalt.
"This season I was really into pushing the boundaries of what is sportswear and what is elegance, what is chic," Helvers told The Associated Press in a backstage interview.
The impeccably cut suits had sportswear touches like zippered hoodies and ventilation flaps. Often the suits, in eye-popping oranges and yellows or muted moss and mauve tones, were topped with flowing microfibre wind breakers or light trenches.
Models wore plastic sunglasses with yellow-glazed lenses and jewelry meant to resemble bicycle chains.
Antoine Arnault, the son of Vuitton parent company LVMH's chairman and CEO Bernard Arnault, hailed the spring-summer 2010 collection as "very inspiring." He said he expected the collection would sell well in these troubled times, though he acknowledged "there were things I couldn't wear, personally."
"You know those yellow suits with Bermuda shorts, that's the kind of thing I couldn't wear at the office," said Arnault, who heads the public relations department at Vuitton.
Louis Vuitton's creative director Marc Jacobs obviously knows such constraints. Jacobs, whose signature look is a knee-length skirt paired with a T-shirt, said he had his eye on a pair of silver sequin-covered dress shoes.
"I want those sequined shoes," he told The AP backstage. "I love them very much."
The show held at a vast art space in eastern Paris attracted celebrity guests including the Black Eyed Peas and American actor Bradley Cooper.
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