The Indian designer, Manish Arora, a former star of London Fashion Week, made his Paris debut on Sunday with a collection as dazzling and colourful as a Bollywood movie.Arora, 35, who staged one of the opening shows on the Paris prêt-a-porter calendar, dressed his models in kaleidoscopic embroideries, glittering beadwork and technicolour imagery reminiscent of this month’s Hindu festivals, the Durga Puja and the Ganesh Chaturvadi.One dress, handmade from sequined jigsaw pieces of Swarovski crystals, featured the elephant god, Ganesh. Other jackets, tunics and trousers were appliquéd in silk and crystals with fantasy imagery inspired by a blend of Indian comic books, - Amar Chitra Katha – and the PopArt of the American painter, Roy Lichstenstein.A jacket and shorts ensemble was hand-beaded with a game of snakes and ladders. Metallic henna-ed hands were emblazoned on a white silk shift.Elsewhere, in a nod to the French ready-to-wear federation, which invited him to show in Paris, he showed designs featuring intricate, appliqués of the Eiffel Tower, the Arc de Triomphe, Montmartre and the pavement café scene.The finale ensemble was a long dress with six foot train, completely covered with 1,500 hand-embroidered and beaded butterflies, which glowed in the dark.

Earlier, the young French designer for the house of Balmain, Christophe Decarnin, demonstrated that the bulging archives of patterns, sketches and vintage garments for the bourgeoisie, had not hindered his pursuance of a more rock ‘n’ roll image for this once traditional brand.Taking America’s West Coast and the hippie movement as inspiration, Decarnin showed tie-dye maxi-dresses, completely hand-embroidered in silver, mirrored vests, embroidered and fringed suede tunics and skintight trousers, corset-laced, with a flurry of ruffles from knee to ankle.The Paris fashion season, final leg on the four-city, global round of designer previews for next spring/summer, continues on Monday with major shows by Dame Vivienne Westwood – whose invitation states “I haven’t a clue what to do; forget politics, it’s a matter of life and theft” – and the collection by fellow British designer, John Galliano for Christian Dior.