Alexis Mabille's enchanted garden

French designer Alexis Mabille can be said to be one of the few traditionalists left on the couture schedule in Paris, for his French-ness and for his couture-ness. His is one of few labels on the schedule that conforms to all of the Chambre Syndicale’s many rules about what constitutes couture and what doesn’t. And the collection he presented this evening served to back those credentials up.

Column gowns took Greco-Roman statues as their inspiration, all in a palette of white, champagne and nude golds, and were decorated with trailing capes, lace drapes and chiton-esque fluid falls of fabric that felt both soft and architectural.

In combining antiquity with classical grace, Mabille played on his reputation for a form-flattering but flamboyant aesthetic. That are what he sells, of course, to eager buyers beyond the usual couture remit; there was plenty here for the Asian buyer and the Russians: old-school and proud-of-it glamour and glitz, along with good old-fashioned catwalk dramatics as models festooned with paper butterflies shimmied and pranced through the interconnecting rooms of the Hotel d’Evreux on the Place Vendome.

There were modern flourishes too in a voluminous golden coat worn with intricately beaded tulle leggings, and a gown finished off with an embellished six pack effect.

But the strength of the collection lay in the gowns: playful, pretty, adventurous without losing any of their accessibility. And in a palette such as this, Mabille will clean up in the bridal market too.