Wang and Arora turn up the colour at Paris fashion

PARIS, France - Balenciaga designer Alexander Wang on Thursday served up knitwear with a dash of colour at Paris fashion while Manish Arora simply took psychedelic and turned it up several notches.

A year after making his debut for Balenciaga, one of the most illustrious names in fashion, New York wonder boy Wang, 30, said he had delved into his own knitwear background for his latest collection, continuing the process he began last season of stamping his own mark on the house.

"It started with the idea of the sweater... almost every look has an element of knitwear, whether embroidered, whether printed or laminated," Wang told reporters backstage.

The designer said he noticed that knitwear was "quite absent" while going through the archives at the fashion house and decided to try and bring some of that "vocabulary" to his collection.

For autumn/winter 2014/15, Wang went for knit dresses with big stripes in orange and navy or purple and black, while asymmetrical jackets and coats came in mottled lilac and crimson or black and yellow with black trims.

In other looks, leg-elongating slim fitted trousers with a slight flare were teamed with jackets with wide faux fur collars and strips down the front.

Considered a prodigious talent by the fashion world, the designer who was born in California to Taiwanese parents launched his own label - a mix of relaxed chic and streetwise edge -- in 2007 when he was just 23.

His arrival at Balenciaga in late 2012 followed the departure of Nicolas Ghesquière, considered to have made the house very much his own during his 15-year tenure.

India's Arora, meanwhile, laid on the sporty youthfulness with a shovel in a collection characterised by colour overload.

Hooded puffa capes came in printed waterproof techno fabric while other capes showcased Arora's signature embroidery.

Laplandic pom-pom hats, Peruvian circle skirts, drop-waisted Chinese workers' trousers and dangly multi-chain gold jewellery all made an appearance and Arora's LED-lit flashing sneakers teamed with striped leg warmers were almost a show in themselves.

Elsewhere on Thursday, Frenchman Guillaume Henry also brightened up his Carven collection with plenty of winter-warming colour - with looks in peach, light blue, crimson and burgundy.

Coats and jackets came with wide belts, zip fronts and high-necked collars; skirts were short with thigh boots or long but split at the front to well above the knee.

The Paris collections move towards their mid-point on Friday with shows by Dior, Isabel Marant and Issey Miyake.

Nine days of ready-to-wear collections for autumn/winter 2014/15 - featuring some 90 shows - are due to wrap up on Wednesday.

But fashion watchers will have to wait until then for the most anticipated event of the week - Ghesquière's debut at Louis Vuitton following the departure last year of Marc Jacobs.