Ladylike bags with slashed skirts: the new Louis Vuitton woman is a complex hybrid of contradictions

There was a nervy energy to Nicolas Ghesquiere???s complex layering, angular contouring and prickly looking fabrics (in reality, ultra-luxurious materials painstakingly embellished with tracks of tiny metal bullets) that made the new setting ??? in Vuitton???s soon-to-open store on the sacred Place Vendome ??? ideal.

The enormous, multi-storied corner site is currently a light-filled, concrete shell (complete with twirly wrought-iron railings and elegant floor to ceiling windows).How perfect for those glowering, Kohl-eyed models in their spike heeled ankle boots and sheer column dresses with rivet-speckled shoulder pads and large harlequin diamond patchworks strategically placed over breasts.

Nicolas Ghesqui??reseems to enjoy peekaboo and paradoxes.Checked tailored blazers ??? long and oversized as is the new trend ??? featured experimental shoulder contouring and sometimes, half sleeves, worn over second-skin, high-shine bodies or bustiers.

Skirts were slashed or scooped out over the hips, trousers were ultra-tight with gilded seams, or drapey and harem-like.The Vuitton ateliers have clearly been working hard ??? the execution was faultless.

The new bag is a neat ladylike semi-circle, reminiscent in its eleganceof something Grace Kelly would have carried in the 1950s.Mind you, other models carried not a bag, but a phone case shaped like the classic Louis Vuitton trunk.Never let it be said that the Vuitton woman is not a complex hybrid of contradictions.

The new store, diametrically opposite the newly refurbished Ritz, is a vote of confidence both in the future of Louis Vuitton and in Paris.The city has been especially jittery in recent months at the lack of tourists.So how to ensure the latter come ??? in droves ??? to the latest Vuitton flagship?

Shortly before its show began, Louis Vuitton issued a press release - as Dolce and Gabanna did a week earlier in Milan - listing the number of social media followers theirinvited guests have at the time of writing.(What kind of new insecurity this breeds remains to be seen.)Karlie Kloss sportive supermodel par excellence, must have been pretty pleased with her 5.5 million Instagram followers before discovering that fellow invitee, the actress Liu Taoi, has 25.5 million on Weibo, the Chinese equivalent of Twitter.

Then again, Catherine Deneuve and Alicia Vikander, also present, apparently have enough heft as actresses and style mavens not to require any digits after their names.Besides which, Vikander has so many fan sites and fake ???realalicia??? feeds she scarcely need bother doing one herself.

The take out for the rest of us?At the end of a month of fashion shows, during which a name-calling turf-war between writers on American Vogue???s website (the alleged old guard) and so-called bloggers (the soi-disant new) briefly became international news, the Vuitton show offered a clear demonstration that fashion brands currently take the brand-enhancing power of social media very seriously indeed.