Five couture styling tricks to help you look more glamorous

Lisa Armstrong

Four days of haute couture shows certainly provide escapism. This is where a single dress can take months to make and cost the same as (or more than) a house in remote France. If you have to ask the price, you almost certainly can’t afford it.

That said, it’s hard to tell how much business is done at full price. Some clients will try to buy the samples and some shows can seem purely like an extravagant bid to dress actresses on the red carpet (a type of advertising for which brands often pay a hefty fee in addition to providing the clothes gratis).

So far, so escapist. But there are also styling tips that can help all of us refresh and rethink the way we wear our clothes, from the everyday to special occasions. Here are five of the most compelling from the past week…

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Under its creative director Pierpaolo Piccioli, Valentino’s couture show is often a couture highlight. This collection was no different. Why? Because Piccioli is so inventive with colour, creating combinations you probably haven’t seen before that make simple, classic shapes seem fresh. Hues that might on their own look overly saccharine become interesting and modern. A pale bubblegum pink skirt with an olive tunic-jacket for instance; a blue pea coat with purple cashmere jumper and custard yellow skirts; dove grey with dandelion; a classic bottle-green full skirt with a neon yellow top and oversized eau de nil blazer. In real life, a little of this goes a long way – one slightly off kilter or electric shade worn with an otherwise neutral outfit will probably do it.

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If you hanker for the texture and structure of something furry, unless you don’t mind being a social pariah, or you’re prepared to keep repeating that it’s vintage over and over again, the real thing is untenable.

Given all the question marks over the polluting petro-chemicals that go into fake fur, designers are moving away from that, too. Instead, at Alaia, which is enjoying a new lease of energy under

Though the clothes may be astronomically expensive, the ideas are there for the taking, says

its Belgian creative director Peter Muller (he was previously Raf Simons’s right hand when the latter was at Dior), used a single merino yarn to create the kind of enormous shoulder-sweeping coats that wouldn’t look out of place in a Helmut Newton photograph.

Alaia aficionados will be pleased to know that Richemont, which owns it, seems to be investing in it: a new boutique is slated to open on a prominent corner of the swanky

Faubourg Saint-Honoré, and Muller has ambitions. Rather than simply raiding the archives, he’s thinking about what a modern Alaia customer might like. She still wants slink, bodycon, dagger heels and to make an impact that never looks exactly effortless, but the fabrications are fresh and arresting.

Haute couture week in Paris: colour at Valentino (left and centre), ‘fake fur’ from Alaia, Dior jewellery, Toteme’s debut