Models outside shop; crowd; men and women show clothes; girl with spring coil-like hat pan to other girls with escorts; girls in helmet like hats; man and girl walk down street.




Initials JP/V/RM/OS



Script is copyright Reuters Limited. All rights reserved

Background: Mini-skirted Martians landed at Pierre Cardin during the Paris fashion week today wearing mini-waisted belts made of rigid metal.

The space age girls that traditionally open the Cardin collections keep their hemlines ultra-short, with waist clinching metal belts, boots trimmed with matching metal rings around the top, and metal or plastic hats.

The Cardin look continues to be an overall or jumper top and matching skirt in tweed or black woolens. This top is worn over turtle necked black ribbed-neck sweaters. Men's cosmonaut styles, shown simultaneously in the couture collection, also endorse the wide metal belts and hard crowned casques that vary between a riding cap and a coal miner's helmet.

The most extreme millinery styles for women are the giant coal shuttles worn back to front with the visor brim sloping down to the shoulders at the back. Other examples of Cardin's eccentric millinery are the deep sea diver's helmets with a round porthole of clear plastic cut into the centre of the mask which covers the entire face.