The crowd gave Yves Saint Laurent a standing ovation for his colorful couture show on Wednesday, which featured his flawless tailoring and technique, and his daring use of color. It's hard to imagine anybody else sustaining such interest through a series of 25 tuxedo suits. Each one was perfection, whether with short skirts, long skirts, long pants, spencers or long jackets with white satin wing lapels or black kimono lapels. The sparkly vineyard embroideries with bunches of grapes plastered onto bolero jackets and necklines of satin cocktail suits and evening gowns nearly brought the house down. The show in the Intercontinental Hotel ballroom attracted celebrity clients including first lady Danielle Mitterrand, Paloma Picasso, film star Catherine Deneuve and American socialite Lynn Wyatt. ``It was terrific, like watching an artist at work,'' said Liza Minnelli. ``His clothes are works of art. It's like going to a museum.'' The suits were classics, wearable anywhere. Shoulders were amply padded but not offensively so. Besides his favorite short and straight skirt, Saint Laurent has adopted another shape and length: a longer length to just below the knee, flared or pleated below the hip. Daytime trousers looked straightforward and sporty, although they could be dressed up by one of the mink or ruddy fox coats, or a taffeta coat, another great Saint Laurent item for winter. With raglan or puffed sleeves, these superb taffeta numbers sometimes had bright, contrasting linings. Saint Laurent's use of zingy color was a far cry from his sober looks of past seasons. Cerise and pink teamed often for day or evening, and brightly piped suede suits came on in turquoise and rust, red and green, rust and navy. It was a huge show _ 134 outfits _ and just about everything was totally elegant and wearable, from the beautiful Chanel-style dresses with touches of white and gold buttons to the marvelously draped chiffons with a feminine high-waisted look to emphasize the bust. Guy Laroche went colorful as well. The double-breasted cafe au lait smooth wool suit was excellently tailored and shown with a bright orange satin blouse. A violet leather fitted jacket with brown mink shawl collar and cuffs over a lean tobacco short skirt made a perfect dressy daytime outfit. Laroche used an original touch in some of the day and evening wear: Chinese-lantern puffs on the sleeves. Some of the evening wear was appealing, especially the beaded and embroidered black dresses. But short evening gowns with puffy skirts and plenty of fancy touches looked young and fussy. Lecoanet-Hemant, a youthful pair of designers celebrating their 10th haute couture season, showed they have all the technique it takes to make couture. But it seems a shame to waste so much fabulous fabric and detail on what sometimes ends up looking more like abstract sculpture than clothes. Topped by spiraling hats, the dresses and suits with tiny skirts, enormous stand-out basque bottoms on jackets, huge cone-shaped tops sometimes looked overladen with details, and too zany for comfort. Nevertheless, the miniskirts, draped and ``laced'' through rhinestone loops, the exotic cut-out patterns and the superb satins and rich Indian fabrics were well worth looking at, if hard to wear. Paco Rabanne also seems to concentrate more on showy art objects than clothes, and aptly showed at the Decorative Arts wing of the Louvre. He is famous for his chain-mail effects, and obliged an audience eager to be entertained. Rabanne's sequined dresses, too, were larger than life, often dazzling in all colors of the rainbow, reflected prism-like from the sequins. Not everything was impractical. Rabanne also showed some very attractive rubber raincoats and a good-looking reversible rubber bolero lined with sequins worn with a black corduroy jumpsuit.
