The autumn 2013 couture shows kicked off with Naomi Campbell striding down the Atelier Versace catwalk as if she'd never been away, quite the mission statement and quite the fashion moment to live up to. Thankfully, each house had something fairly huge up its immaculately tailored, hyper-embellished sleeve with which to wow their lucky attendees.

In a show of real intent – that is, global domination perhaps – Raf Simons took his audience on a round-the-world trip, with clothes inspired by flags and different continents, which was accompanied by a live shoot behind the scenes with some of the world's biggest photographers. Those images were then projected onto the walls of the purpose built cube as models walked its perimeter.

At Chanel, the set was a burnt out and crumbling theatre with a futuristic backdrop just beyond its proscenium arch. Models in the house's signature tweeds and boucle, tweaked a bit (of course) were meant to symbolise the meeting of old and new. It was a similar story at Valentino, with models as artefacts from a cabinet of curiosities, decorated in lace, tweeds and silk motifs of (among other things) a rhinoceros. And Maison Martin Margiela continued to be the world's most luxurious upcyclers with its Artisanal collection, made from reclaimed pieces included marble busts and an 30s opera costume.

Viktor & Rolf staged a strong return to the couture stage, with a show in which they arranged models into a representation of a Zen garden, as they wore adjustable and capacious black garments and stood in formation as fabulous boulders. At the other end of the scale, Giorgio Armani's Privé collection was all light and ethereal angel dust, in a delicate shade of translucent neutral that felt more like air than it did fabric.

And Jean Paul Gaultier and Elie Saab presented statement collections in their own very different ways: Saab's was a collection full of elegant, almost overwhelmingly glamorous gowns, whereas Gaultier's was all sexy spies and sashaying models. Both captured the essential drama and spectacle of the couture shows.

Click the gallery for our guide to some fo the season's most amazing looks, as well as a few micro-trends (not that you can really categorise couture by trends – but just, if you could...)