In fact, couture is making something of a comeback, with a new generation of designers jostling for membership of this prestigious and select club.In the decade from 1987, the number of designers entitled to call themselves ``couturiers'' slumped from 24 to 14. Yet for the coming winter season, there are no fewer than 25 shows being staged over five days from Saturday on the official programme, even if they do not all meet the very strict criteria of ``haute couture'' in its purest sense.

Encouragingly, there are also another 15 designers who want to get in on the act and are staging shows on the sidelines to demonstrate their ``couture'' skills in the hope of gaining media attention from the 900 or so journalists worldwide who flock to Paris for the main event.

They include RituBeri from India, presenting a collection at her country's embassy for the first time, and 32-year-old Saudi designer Yahya, who can boast of having dressed the late fashion icon Princess Diana on her trips to the Middle-East.

Bettina, who was the fetish model of Hubert de Givenchy and Jacques Fath in the 1950s, has also chosen couture week for the launch of a collection named after her but designed by Adeline Andre.

The house of Herve Leger will also be unveiling a collection by 23-year-old Jerome Dreyfuss, without its eponymous founder who was sacked by the new owners, the American group BCBG.

Highlights of the week are expected to include John Galliano's collection for Christian Dior, which will involve transporting the whole media circus and models to the lavish surroundings of the Orangerie in the palace of Versailles.

The designer duo behind Lecoanet Hemant, which manages to sell around 40 models a season, are showing their wares in a more modest but nevertheless elegant setting, in the gardensof the Palais Royal in central Paris. ``Our customers are young and we don't need to resort to paying actresses to attract the punters,'' they say. Amid all this fin-de-siecle optimism, there is a lone voice predicting gloom and doom, no less than veteran designer Paco Rabanne, whose interpretation of the dire prophecies of Nostradamus has convinced him that the end of the world is nigh. So nigh in fact, that he has declared that his show on Saturday will be his last and he is shutting up shop and giving all his staff a holiday to get as far out of Paris as they can, because he firmly believes that the Russian space station Mir will drop out of the sky onto the French capital on the day of the total eclipse of the sun on August 11. Paco Rabanne is taking refuge in Brittany. If his predictions do not come to pass, he has promised that he will never expect to be taken seriously again.

You have been warned.