Balmain SS16 show report Paris Fashion Week

The supermodel Gigi Hadid made a statement of defence this week after she received criticism regarding her body shape. “Yes, I have boobs, I have abs, I have a butt, I have thighs, but I’m not asking for special treatment. I’m fitting into the sample sizes,” Hadid wrote on a post on Instagram.

She certainly managed to squeeze into the chiffon ruffles and brown macramé gowns that decorated the Balmain catwalk on Thursday afternoon. Designer Olivier Rousteing is always first to celebrate the cult of the curve, and his line in womenswear with it’s peekaboo cut-outs and spandex strapping and lattice-like sheaths studded in jewels is surely fixated on women with “boobs and a butt”.

For SS16, his catwalk offered us models with bodies both voluptuous and vanishing. The clothes — caramel-coloured crochet-knot dresses and toffee-coloured suede sets, ruffle trousers and power cardigans, all worn with big square shoulders and gold collars — looked equally unflattering on all of them. The palette of clingy tans and fawns reminded me of those 1980s sweets, Toffifee — a chocolate toffee, rather like an upscale eclair, that looks like a globular button. I’m sure there may be a corner of the world where dressing up like a caramel chew is enticing, but here it wasn’t very tasty.