Chanel goes rustic at Paris show

The last place one might expect to find a Chanel girl in all her finery would be rolling around in a hayloft, but Karl Lagerfeld likes springing surprises.

For his spring-summer 2010 collection on Tuesday he erected an authentic lifesize wooden barn emblazoned with a giant Chanel logo under the dome of the Grand Palais. His models tripped out from the inside of a huge haystack onto a straw-strewn catwalk.

The mood was of carefree abandon, with the girls' hair in unravelling chignons and their summer tweed suits, in shades of pale straw and stone, similarly in loose weave and fraying at the edges.

Ears of corn were embroidered onto unisex black sharp-shouldered jackets, also shown on a male model, and turned into necklaces and fine gilt belts over slim jeans.

Tiny flowers encrusted the hems and necklines of pert black and white dogstooth check sundresses, and big red poppies and blue cornflowers were appliqued on cream, lacy knit cardigans with full, flippy skirts.

On their feet the models wore Lagerfeld's answer to clogs, high-heeled mules, often laced up the leg like Greek sandals, over hose faintly tattooed with the house logo and handbag chain. A version of the Chanel bag looked like a picnic hamper.

For a rousing finale British pop sensation Lily Allen and her band were beamed up from below stage to sing a number from her latest hit country bash album "it'S not me, it'S you" and Lagerfeld's bride and groom took a tumble in the hay before the master himself emerged to take a bow.

Jean-Charles de Castelbajac, who regularly turns his shows into rock gigs, chose live band Ebony Bones to set the ear-splitting tone for his swashbuckling Treasure Island-inspired collection.

A palm fringed beach and thatched hut formed the backdrop, while models weaved in and out of menacing fins on the catwalk, suggesting shark-infested waters.

Castelbajac's saucy shipwrecked sailors wore navy dress uniform loaded down with epaulettes, rope, and gold braiding, and jaunty miniature versions of marines' hats, over grass skirts.

True to his love affair with Disney cartoons, Castelbajac turned Donald Duck into a pirate with a black eyepatch, embroidered in sequins onto the front of a satin Tee-shirt dress.

He put his imagined castaway convent girls in tiered white broderie anglaise frocks and knee-high socks with suspenders.

Fake scarlet macaws with glittering beaks perched on shoulders. One looked as if it had been flattened to make the eye-catching feathered front of a black knit dress.

A neat idea was a coat dress with clear pockets in which to display one's holiday postcards.

Garish woven raphia dresses in black with red, green, yellow or blue were tongue-in-cheek versions of sinister witchdoctors' headdresses and totem poles.