Couture with a pulse from guest designer Yiqing Yin

PARIS - Fox fur, organic cuts and graceful drapes in tones of moss green, rust and powdered gold: Yiqing Yin brought high fashion down to earth Wednesday with a look bursting with animal energy.

Yiqing Yin - Haute Couture SS 2012 / Photo: Pixel Formula

Invited by the exclusive haute couture club to unveil a guest collection on the final day of the spring-summer Paris shows, the Chinese-born French designer earned warm applause from the guests packing a historic convent.

"Animality without being provocative," was how she billed her collection.

"I wanted to create kinds of totems, half way between the animal and the architectural," the 26-year-old told AFP afterwards. "As if the body was transforming itself but froze half way through."

Opening the show, two models stepped out side by side in dramatic long-sleeved gowns -- one black, one white -- skimming the body, with vast hoods that flowed straight into deep scooped necks and long flared skirts.

Aerial gowns in lustrous shades of copper or powdery gold were pinned at single points on the hips, shoulders or waist, while short sheath dresses were adorned at the back or chest with intricate pleats or cut-out ribbons.

Yiqing Yin - Haute Couture SS 2012 / Photo: Pixel Formula

A sensual dress in black wool jersey bared the back entirely, down to the small of the spine, a double ribbon forming a halter neck above a fitted skirt.

Flashes of fur and embroidery grew more frequent as the show went on.

White fox fur was sewn onto an intricate long cream gown, whose shoulders and sleeves were adorned with a piece of delicate tone-on-tone bead embroidery, cut up and reassembled for the occasion.

And a spectacular hooded coat-dress was made entirely from thick black and white fox fur, the pelts stitched together in a symmetrical, organic pattern, to form what looked like a single giant animal.

The designer explained she "wanted to transform materials, like lace or other traditional crafts, and turn them into something new, organic, that integrates with the body based on its anatomy, rather than as a decoration."