Paris fashion week was officially opened on Sunday with Balmain's comeback with a new designer in charge and with Yohji Yamamoto's oversized menswear.

Balmain is hoping not only for the conservation of its brand, which had quite a prestigious past, but also for a blossoming future. The French house has filed for bankruptcy protection and hired and fired a series of designers, so it's been having a troubling period for the past two years. Its new designer, Christophe Decarnin, who is trying to renewal the design house said: "I looked in particular at the first years of creation of Pierre Balmain, up to the 1950s. Among the recurring themes were pleating, draping and also the buttons, a lot of buttons on the evening gowns."

Balmain is also set to open franchise stores in Russia and the Middle East as it seeks affluent clients to replace the Park Avenue socialites who decamped with former artistic director Oscar de la Renta when his contract expired in 2002.

As for Yohji Yamamoto, he sent on the catwalk oversized blazers with drooping shoulder-pads and baggy trousers with crotches hovering at the knee, as a tribute to volume and the inspiration it brings. "It was very risky," the Japanese designer told The Associated Press after the autumn-winter ready-to-wear display. "A hidden body is always mysterious and sexy," he strongly added.