Like a chorus in a Greek tragedy, Valentino's friends and clients, who gathered at the Rodin Museum for the couturier's last and final curtain, started their comments with a single phrase: "It's the end of an era,"they all said.

  With mother-of-pearl glazes and fishtail skirts, it was a mermaid moment at Jean Paul Gaultier. In one of those serendipitous conjunctions that we call fashion, the shell inspiration that Chanel showed earlier this couture week floated to the surface at Gaultier.

  In an exquisite collection - as delicate as it was romantic - Karl Lagerfeld took Chanel to where even Coco herself had never plunged: the ocean bed.

  It wasn't John Galliano's most emotionally moving presentation nor his most daring, but it had a mesmerizing combination of puffy-light silhouette with intense decoration.

  The kitsch and irony of Jeff Koons seems a long stretch from voluptuous and sensual jewelry. And even if Damien Hirst recently embedded diamonds in a skull, you would hardly expect to see his work alongside a swooping diamond necklace.

  'It represents my idea of a man with shoulders back and chest out,"said Kris Van Assche, as he realized his dream of machismo for his first Dior Homme collection on the runway.

  Whereas most "new"designs are variations on existing ones, the two French brothers, both in their 30s, are among the handful of truly original designers who develop entirely new types of products. They are meant to be flexible and elegant.

  The metallic badge said it all: 20 years of Martin Margiela creating the iconoclastic and fantastic. The Belgian designer has reached a landmark anniversary -- and he celebrated with fine tailoring and inserts of edgy elements.

  Unemployment and the inability to find a good pair of swim trunks has produced a global multimillion dollar underwear and swimwear company.

  All the strong designers for the 2008 winter menswear season are stirring up a mix to get an ironic take on apparently sober clothes. So a shrunken suit turned to show a wacky back at Junya Watanabe and Yohji Yamamoto had classic outfits with manic proportions.

  The figure floating through the sky in a blizzard of rose petals was not so much a remake of David Bowie's "The Man Who Fell to Earth."It was the soaring imagination of Stefano Pilati at YSL.

  Between the style of a samurai and a sports star, the model's lattice jacket gleamed space-age silver on the runway. Was this a piece of intricate Italian handcraft at the Calvin Klein men's show?

  "A respect for nature"was part of the concept that Gildo Zegna has brought to the company's mighty new 8,000-square-meter, or 86,000-square-foot, headquarters in Milan's Via Savona.

  The search for well-made clothes has never generated so many good ideas. Doing it right has replaced doing it differently as the mantra for the latest crop of talents to emerge on the European scene.