Echoes of London's Carnaby Street designer Mary Quant rippled through this fall 2010 collection, unveiled in a grand mansion on Avenue Foch, Paris' most expensive area in terms of real estate prices.

Curvy pop culture dresses and jackets, nearly all of them in shiny wool, were kicked up with all sorts of metallic and fabric flowers, adding a futurist feel to the clothes. Half the show was black, the rest came in block hues of violet, canary yellow and burgundy.

Dresses in brocade and puckered chiffon flowers were cut well above the knee, most of them were sleeveless, some had shoulder straps. Some were paired with leggings, with cuffs, toughening the look. There was no jewelry, but every look was heavily encrusted with the metallic petals.

The shoes were courtly, and masculine, the sort a duke might have worn at Versailles 200 years ago. Yet they did not look too literal. If anything, the square-tied modern courtier footwear was very new and sure to be influential worldwide.

"The '60s is still, in many people's imagination, the future. That's because it was the first time fashion tapped into science. What I wanted was to mix that with the 18th century, because that felt different," explained designer Miuccia Prada after the show.