UPDATE: Christian Dior gets colourful at Couture Week

Let the couture shows begin! Pictures have JUST landed of the Christian Dior Haute Couture collection for A/W '10. Our style director Paula Reed, who is tweeting from Paris all week, loved the fab candy-coloured embroidered jackets with genius Stephen Jones hats. More from her soon... Well, when she gets a break to go back to her hotel!

UPDATE: Christian Dior gets colourful 
What an amazing day! Blue sky. Light breeze. Fabulous frocks. What else could a girl possibly need? First stop off the Eurostar was the Dior show at the famous Avenue Montaigne HQ. This was credit crunch couture: downsized and intimate and the perfect example that there are upsides to everything....even this crappy economy.

Normally the audience views the Dior show from afar in an enormous venue. With the return to the showroom we got to see everything up close as the models wound their way through a series of living room sized salons (well, I admit, rather well heeled living rooms, but you know what I mean!).

When I grow up I will have a flat painted in Dior colours: dove grey carpet, pale walls, a chandelier or two and a bowl full of hydrangeas or maiden hair ferns. There was a lady sitting opposite me wearing the perfect shade of dusty lavender, which is already feeding ideas for my fantasy sofa. But this is all beside the point.

When the show started it was clear this was going to be much less about catwalk stunts and more about Dior classic tailoring: perfectly ladylike Bar suits, but with glimpses of corset, or suspender belt or silk charmeuse slip. The colours ranged from creamy flesh to zingy orange and poisonous limes. And the looks were all topped off with insanely gorgeous Stephen Jones hats: pin wheels of feathers or huge saucers of straw.

Accessories were also super ladylike: seamed stockings, delicate dangly diamond earrings, perfectly manicured scarlet nails and black liquid eyeliner finished the looks off.

Here are my favourite Dior moments, snapped on my iPhone. Sorry for the camera shake......I was a bit excited.

PS: If you missed Paula's introduction to Couture, here's the scoop.