Citizens of the world unite

TAKE the brushed wool skirt and bustier. It is perfectly simple in construction - the waistband elasticated for comfort, the front-zippered top similarly easy - yet the effect is extravagant, festive.

The rich tapestry of dusky reds, rust, old gold. The folkloric feeling suggested by a cut-work border at the hem. The feather-soft fabric. What inspired Christian Lacroix here? No other contemporary designer prompts this question so insistently, but then Lacroix has always been synonymous with fashion as an art form or, as he would prefer, a craft honed by a lifetime of fascinated observation.

As a child growing up in cultured middle-class comfort in a village near the Camargue in the south of France, he saw Picasso and Cocteau enjoying cocktails after the bullfights that thrilled him with their bravado and pageantry.

As a teenager in Montpellier where he studied French literature and later in Paris where he switched to art, he was swept into the world of fashion and found himself witness to the first great explosion of ready-to-wear.

As the designer who, at the age of 37, finally got his big break when he was taken on by the House of Jean Patou, he finally found release for that brilliant imagination which has captivated women ever since.

''When I was at Patou we used to make up virtually the entire plot of a novel for each collection,'' Lacroix recalled in his recently published autobiography Pieces of a Pattern.