Bike messenger chic rules Vuitton's catwalk

Menswear designer Paul Helvers sent out models in generously cut single-button jackets and cuffed shorts toting across-the-chest messenger bags in nubby leather. Models in dress shoes with heels capped in fluorescent rubber trod across a catwalk covered in black gravel that sparkled like asphalt.

"This season I was really into pushing the boundaries of what is sportswear and what is elegance, what is chic," Helvers told The Associated Press in a backstage interview.

The impeccably cut suits had sportswear touches like zippered hoodies and ventilation flaps. Often the suits, in eye-popping oranges and yellows or muted moss and mauve tones, were topped with flowing microfiber windbreakers or light trenches.

Models wore plastic sunglasses with yellow-glazed lenses and jewelry meant to resemble bicycle chains.

Antoine Arnault, the son of Vuitton parent company LVMH's chairman and CEO Bernard Arnault, hailed the spring-summer 2010 collection as "very inspiring." He said he expected the collection would sell well in these troubled times, though he acknowledged "there were things I couldn't wear, personally."

"You know those yellow suits with Bermuda shorts, that's the kind of thing I couldn't wear at the office," said Arnault, who heads the public relations department at Vuitton.

Louis Vuitton's creative director Marc Jacobs obviously knows such constraints. Jacobs, whose signature look is a knee-length skirt paired with a T-shirt, said he had his eye on a pair of silver sequin-covered dress shoes.

"I want those sequined shoes," he told The AP backstage. "I love them very much."

The show held at a vast art space in eastern Paris attracted celebrity guests including the Black Eyed Peas and American actor Bradley Cooper.