Paris fashion takes flight with Dior's look back

"It felt more modern to go to the far past, not the modernized look of the last decade," he adds.

The result was embroidered silk jumpsuits, wool coats with rounded shoulders and over sized cape-like collars and jackets with pleated backs.

Simons kept mostly to a palette of pale green, pink, off-white, black and navy. But there were bold colors, too, such as an electric-blue embroidered silk dress and a bright-red wool jacket.

Simons has repeatedly focused on the theme of modernity in recent collections.

His collection from last July, featuring multicultural influences such as African beading, was described as a step away from the fashion house's characteristic French style.

Earlier this year, Simons spoke of not wanting to "force a look" on women and of making sure they can wear his clothes and still kick off their heels and go dancing.

Haute couture had become "something women were watching...as a spectacle, the way you go to the theater", he says, adding that he wanted to reconnect it "more with the way of living".

Worn exclusively by the world's richest women, haute couture exists only in Paris.

It is a legally protected appellation subject to strict criteria, such as the amount of work carried out by hand, the limited number of pieces and the size of a house's work-force. Around 30 haute-couture collections for autumn/winter 2014/15 were shown in Paris during the week.