India's Manish Arora sends out dazzling disco display at Crazy Horse cabaret

PARIS - Models in minidresses that glittered like disco mirror balls strutted their stuff Thursday on the stage of Paris' infamous Crazy Horse cabaret at rising Indian designer Manish Arora's ready-to-wear show.

It was a less salacious, though no less thrilling, spectacle than the stripteases usually on offer at "le Crazy," as it's often called here.

Dresses covered in scintillating Swarovski crystals and pleated skinny pants were outfitted with elaborate space age harnesses with epaulettes dripping in rhinestones.

Arora's models wore sparkling masks applied to their foreheads, in shapes reminiscent of the bobbed wigs that are the hallmark of Crazy Horse dancers. Golden chains swung suggestively from models' hips as they pounded the stage on vertiginous booties.

The earsplitting soundtrack shook the walls as the audience of fashion editors and buyers lounged in red velvet chairs.

It was a mad, over-the-top display sure to please the New Delhi-based designer's eccentric A-list clients like Katy Perry and Lady Gaga - full of sex, structure and sparkle, with a dash of Michael Jackson.

For spring-summer 2010, Arora played on abstract patterns rather than the tropical animals and plants of seasons past.

"I wanted to get away from the visuals I'm known for and do something more geometrical," Arora told The Associated Press during a preview of the collection. "It's a sort of 2009 version of the 1980s."

Arora has struck a very different path from his fellow Indian designers, who tend to do more traditional garb. "They think I'm mad," he said with a little laugh.

Still, Arora says his sort of intricate workmanship - weeks of painstaking stitching, embroidering and finishing go into many of the garments - wouldn't be possible outside of India, with its abundant labour supply.

"It's really meticulous work that honestly couldn't be done anywhere else," said Arora, whose New Delhi atelier has about 250 full-time employees.