Sometimes it’s easy to forget, with all the high-speed disposable fashion around, that there’s a real craft to making a garment. Couture fashion week in Paris is there to remind us of just that. This season all the traditional techniques were pushed to the limit.

There’s something to be said about showing summer clothes in the summer, albeit next summer’s clothes. There was a distinct enthusiasm at the collections in Europe last week and it came through in fresh, exciting clothes with a minimal, androgynous sensibility.