"Cowboy chic" the new Hermes style

PARIS (Reuters) - The new Hermes woman is a 21st century Western film heroine. Wearing a black Stetson, she walks straight out from the desert, scantily clad in black wide-cleavage dress, tightened at the waist by sturdy superimposed belts and adorned with studded leather bracelets.

Jean-Paul Gaultier, the enfant terrible of French fashion and star designer at Hermes, imagined next summer's woman as trigger-happy adventurer dressed as if she were about to shoot down an opponent in front of a saloon bar.

And her no-nonsense attitude makes her all the more sensual, say his fans.

"Jean-Paul loves women and dresses us in a feminine and very sensual way," super-model Stephanie Seymour, who opened the show wearing an elegant white shirt, straight pants and suede hat, told Reuters.

"I thought it was like a chic Pocahontas," Seymour added about the collection.

Strutting in Seymour's footsteps was fellow super-model Naomi Campbell, wearing a flamboyant red dress that barely covered her body and revealed a sexy red bikini bottom.

Amid an Arizona desert-themed decor, complete with sand and cactuses, Campbell threw out her cowboy hat to a cheering crowd against a backdrop of Western-style music.

"I did not go to Santa Fe," Gaultier told Reuters. "It was only in my head."

Gaultier's 2009 spring/summer "cowboy chic" collection offered a new interpretation of Hermes's equestrian roots -- the fashion house started as a saddle maker.