Paris Fashion Week is doing much more for the plus-size model movement than New York Fashion Week, where the only distinguished plus-size model casting was Crystal Renn at Z-Spoke.

Jean Paul Gaultier, who has become known for casting Renn in his runway shows and present fall 2010 campaign, cast Beth Ditto to open and close his show Saturday. Renn was one of the few extra plus-size models on the runway.

Gaultier told reporters after the show, what counts is personality; there is not just the one form of typecast beauty. This collection’s pleats can be worn by any size and settle in to different body shapes.

British Vogue editor Alexandra Shulman, for one, is strenuous of “shock” casting. She told the Guardian, “Instead of a fuss being made about a little cause célèbre exceptions on the catwalk, what I’d actually like in its place is for most models to be a size 10 rather than a size 8.”

John Galliano’s devotion to a theme is only one of the immense things about the man. He got so into the sailing, tropical theme for his spring 2011 Dior show, which walked this morning in Paris, that he took his bow wearing a pirate outfit, his hair in two beach-perfect fishtail braids. Those plaits were only one scrap of the excitement!

The models, some of whom wore leis, worked their small sailor hats by giving salutes at the end of the runway, which was made to appear like a rusty slipway. The girls appeared at the other end from a set that looked like a desert island.

Little flowers germinated toward the floor from the crocheted middle of one, looking almost like Christmas-tree ornaments poised by tentacles. Some skirts resembled grass hula styles, creation the show seem at times just a coconut bra away from a no-food luau.

But the most exciting thing about this collection is that it ties rather to the mermaid theme that’s been teetering on the edge of full fashion-world acceptance for concerning a year. As soon as a celebrity cool goes out in a seashell bra, the ‘maids will in fact be in business.