Paris Fashion Week: Day 8

Valentino's lighthearted addition of Zoolander actors Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson on the catwalk unanimously stole the show on day eight of Paris Fashion Week. Reprising their Derek Zoolander and Hansel characters, the actors closed the show with a little help from Anna Wintour. "Fashion can be very serious but it can also be fun too," Valentino designer Maria Grazia Chiuri told Dazed backstage. "I loved the first film, I watched it when I was really young." As for the clothes, A-line silhouettes and the gold leaf effects on fox-fur coats, as well as velvet coats and fisherman's knit sweaters. Checkerboard and striped dresses in graphic black and white opened the show, but it was the midi length A line skirts and dresses the pronounced the silhouette.

There was a science behind Iris van Herpen's beautifully executed collection, with 'terraforming' fabrics, such a metal woven through silk. "The whole concept of terraforming started in science fiction, but it has become a reality," said the designer after her show. "It made me think about what is our space? Should we do it? The collection is mainly my fantasy of what we would do." If the fantasy came alive on the catwalk, it was through the 3D prints, as seen on dresses, that could have been rock crystal formations. Laser cut leather was another optical delight.

Alexander McQueen's creative director Sarah Burton looked to photographer David Simms' stills of roses for inspiration. Backstage she stated: "I started looking at a woman and a female form and a rose, and it was the idea of David Simms' pictures of roses and the idea that something so beautiful can be on the verge of decay. "There's such beauty in all stages of a rose's life: in the beginning it's fresh and beautiful, and then there's a fragility to its life. So as the collection went on, she unravelled. I wanted the clothes to feel light - knit and lace - so she kind of peels away the way the rose peels away. There's a femininity in all stages of it," Burton said. The models Burton sent down the runway had candyfloss hair, white eyelashes and prim Victoriana collars. Gothic leather chokers were cut to look like lace, encircling the throat before extending suggestively down to the breasts. Buttons on both the backs and fronts of dresses were left undone, just as the rose at its most fragile.

Images: Valentino, Iris van Herpen, Alexander McQueen AW15