So here we are, the new millennium has arrived, and still the supremely elitist and brazenly politically incorrect world of haute couture survives. Yet again this week the pictures from the Paris collections were lighting up newspapers and magazines around the world.

Some 10 years ago, you wouldn't have bet your hat on the couture houses lasting into the 21st century. Yet couture has become an integral element of a huge promotional machine which drives large luxury fashion, fragrance and accessory empires.

It doesn't really matter that the numbers of couture clients have dwindled from 40,000 after the second World War to perhaps 2,000 today. Their presence at the collections lends credibility to the archaic loss-leader business. What the presidents of these couture houses really want is the images of glamorous clothes on beautiful models being flashed around the world.

They want beauty and perhaps a little controversy - and they got that in buckets this season in Paris, where John Galliano's spring collection for Dior inspired Pierre Berge, YSL's business partner, to say: "They will sell well to the tramps."

In fact, he wasn't far wrong because Galliano had been inspired by the hobos who sleep rough along the banks of the Seine where he jogs daily. Girls were dressed in baggy Chaplinesque suits - ripped, torn and threadbare - and dishevelled skirts made of rough sacking or newsprint, belted with a jangling array of utensils and empty Jack Daniels bottles (everything you need for a life on the road). Their make-up smeared faces verged on the maniacal.

Despite their unsettling look there was something strangely appealing about the distressed Gainsboroughstyle evening wear and the rogueish Chaplin figures. The look, though, has scandalised the French press.

In Galliano's defence, so did Christian Dior's "New Look" in 1947 and this, in part, is why Galliano was hired by the house - to shock and shake up attitudes towards fashion, especially couture.

Certainly it contrasted sharply with the chic, lady-like presentations from Ungaro, Valentino and Balmain with not a stitch or a thread out of place.

Undoubtedly, the collections have been pretty, with some beautiful reworkings of Valentino's quietly luxurious 1960s cashmere coats and trousers in shades of ivory and beige, and Ungaro's delicate butterfly-inspired collection of wing-shaped capes and jackets over chiffon sarongs embroidered or printed with their lapidary markings.

Even Alexander McQueen, who is as renowned for his theatrics as Galliano, played it quiet this season with an impeccable array of client-pleasing tailoring at Givenchy mixed in with a few sensational evening dresses, such as a gown of jet beading on nude tulle. But it took Dior to rouse the fashion community out of its lethargy.

Haute couture gives a fashion house identity. A collection means nothing without a personality and when that person succumbs to inevitable mortality, you need a new name to take the house forward. This is just what Karl Lagerfeld at Chanel and Donatella Versace do - they give their fashion personality.

Donatella Versace has emerged from the shadow of her late brother Gianni and is stamping her identity and style on the Versace Atelier collection which was exquisitely worked into a range of day outfits and slithery evening wear in laser-cut python and chiffon, invisibly stitched on to tulle over silk lace. It was feminine, sexy and very desirable.

So was the Chanel collection, which proved that haute couture still has the ability to move fashion forward. Lagerfeld will soon have us all trading in our skinny skirts for something that swishes and gently bobs as we walk.

One legendary name - Saint-Laurent - is still very much in charge of his haute couture collection. While he courted publicity in his youth, he has no need for such hype nowadays, so venerated has he become. He still crafts the most elegant suits and romantic evening dress.

This time he picked a Spanish theme, with gowns of ruffled black tulle and flounced skirts, rose-red gypsy tops with little fringes of lasercut flowers and, of course, Carmen-red lipstick. Living legends don't need sensationalism to stay in the headlines.