The walls of the Grand Palais carry the whispered echo of shows gone by. The Tuileries are once again the domain of the park stroller. And the stiletto-ed queues outside the Theatre de Chaillot have dispersed. Paris Fashion Week has come to a close, completing our month-long trek through a new season of trends.

We celebrated ghostly brows in New York, witnessed baby hairs fly in London and saw tonal browns triumph in Milan. So what of Paris?

The City of Lights is not one to waver. It knows its own mind – and is never afraid to express it. What emerged were directional trends that came together to create an overall impression of resilient femininity. ‘Tough’ was the word that sprung from the lips of make-up artists and session stylists over and over again as a profound sense of strength to the point of severity was communicated on the catwalk. And it was the structure and shape that provided the language to do so.

From moulded, sculptural hairstyles to illustrative, bold eye lines and masterful plays on light and shadow, graphic shapes adopted the symbolism of strength. Paris then, was a fashion week that celebrated form and finesse. A week where the true artistry of beauty came to the fore to deliver bold – sometimes even stark – looks as experts studied the face in renewed detail, analysing its curves and contours with all the scrutiny of a painter grafting away in his garret.

What we’re left with is looks that require skill to execute and confidence to wear. For autumn's beauty aesthetic is bold, uncompromising and utterly precise. So save your easy breezy, carefree beauty for summer. Because according to the new Paris rules, trying hard – and showing it – should be your new raison d’etre. 

1. The big black eye
If you take two things away from Paris, let them be this: Eye shapes must be exaggerated and the colour must be black. Feline flicks kicked up high towards the brow at Jean-Paul Gaultier, at Lanvin black was daubed in a painterly fashion across the eyelids, leaving Tom Pecheux to introduce a felt tip-like, three-tiered liner look at Anthony Vaccarello that came with an accent of red. The message for eyes is the bolder the better – as long as you pare back the rest of the face. 

2. Cool skin
This is the way to work said bold, black eye. By the end of the week, it seemed that make-up artists had reached a silent consensus about creating a complexion that was not only cool in tone, but spoke literally of a lack of heat. A plummeting temperature that came from within for this tough new take on womanhood. To do, you may tweak your foundation shade to be a half shade lighter as at AF Vandevorst – or take your cue from Haider Ackermann and Roland Mouret where make-up artists, Yadim and Val Garland respectively used cool, concrete greys to contour the cheeks.

3. The Fifties gent
​If New York dialled us back to the seventies and Milan recalled the sixties, Paris adopted a masculine aesthetic that was all fifties. Stylist Anthony Turner was concerned with toughening up ponies with a sense of slick androgyny, razorblading the ends of the tails to create ruler-straight, blunt tips at Kenzo. Both Acne and Maxime Simoens featured one gelled, raked-back side in an ode to the kind of gesture Carey Grant might make, sweeping his hair from his face to indicate a confidently crisp fastidiousness.

4. Woodland shades
Fashion wouldn’t be fashion without a few contradictions. So as much as the autumn/winter 2014 Paris woman was an empowered urbanite, she still had time to go down to the woods each day. Colour was few and far between but at Dior, a mossy green lit up with gold skittered over eyelids, Elie Saab’s were dark and leafy and at Issey Miyake glitter the colour of coppery leaves crept onto the lower lash line. Woodland glade violet provided a rare foray into colour for the autumn Chloe girl.

5. Twisted sister
For the low-maintenance woman, the autumn shows have provided ample examples of clean, fresh, apparently unstyled hair. Yet by the time we arrived in Paris, a new trend had begun to take shape – literally. Céline’s bound and twisted style that dropped neatly down towards the nape was pretzel-like and characteristically chic. It was more a case of cinnamon buns at the braided Issey Miyake show space – but it was Guido’s Sci-Fi squiggle that perched atop models heads at Jean Paul Gaultier that was perhaps the most exciting. In one stroke, (and a can of Redken 23 Forceful Finishing Spray) he took topknots from Flintstone’s cutesy to severe, Paris chic. 

6. The teenage lip
Recall if you will, those adolescent years in the self-esteem wilderness when you were desperate to wear make-up, but forbidden to do so. Teenage rules of course, are made to be broken. So make-up artists Alex Box, Lucia Pieroni and Val Garland relived their teenage rebellion via barely-there lip looks with a whisper of pink at Veronique Leroy and Vanessa Bruno and a modern matte finish that even the headmistress would find difficult to pinpoint at Stella McCartney and Isabel Marant, confirming dressed down lips now carry the cachet of cool. 

7. The central element
After three weeks of side partings, Paris it seems, has had enough. So to centre parts at Balmain, Stella McCartney and Sonia Rykiel. These though, were not the cool, carefree parts of a nineties Kate Moss. Clean, crisp and poker straight, the centre is the new power part for the Parisienne with an accent of shine either side to add polish and severity.

8. The artsy brow
It’s not enough to be bushy. Brushing your brows up simply wont do. For fashion loves to push boundaries and after being built up over the past few seasons, brows now want to take a starring role. Never a look for the literal minded, Haider Ackermann’s size zero brows were stuck-on in a shape to conjure images of Greta Garbo. Yet if Gaultier’s were huge, swooping and bird-like, the brows at Alexander McQueen and Givenchy were noticeable by their absence. Having a wardrobe of brow looks at your disposal will be de rigueur come autumn.

9. Theatrical ponies
Ah, ponytails. As perennial in beauty as little black dresses are in fashion. They're what we do with our hair when we exercise, wash our face and generally can’t think of anything better. So naturally, stylists must come up with ways of making them well, more interesting. For James Pecis, this meant packing the tail with texture then sending it a little off-kilter at Leroy. Valentino’s tails were bound by black bands along their lengths. But of course, it was Chanel, whose ragamuffin, tweedy dreads who won first prize for most creative take on the new season pony.

10. The whispered nail
​Yes, confirmed nail technician Marian Newman, we are in the midst of a nail backlash. The catwalk it seems, is sick of stick-on flowers, crackled topcoats and nails that wrestle half-day chunk from your diary to perfect. It now wants something speedy and so subtle it’s all but invisible. So the bizarre technique of the season appeared at Vivienne Westwood (of course), where Newman pushed earthy eye shadow shades onto nails then followed with a matte top coat for a mere hint at colour. Or poured white pigment into matte lacquer for a more ghostly result overall. A barely-there shade of greige that gave hands the appearance of the dead at McQueen confirmed that bizarre – not the usual berry shades – is what will dictate autumn's nail aesthetic.