After a hearty fashion week in Milan, style has now landed in Paris. Beautiful models will be strutting down the catwalks for the next five days.

Emerging designers fought for the limelight as Paris’s autumn-winter 2011-12 read-to-wear shows began on Tuesday, but the surprise sacking of Dior’s longtime designer John Galliano stole their thunder.

There was plenty of drama on the runway, with the dazzling – in every sense of the word – collections from Balmain, the It Girl’s go-to label for serious party clothes, and India’s inventive Manish Arora, who’s appointment at iconic label and collaboration with Nespresso (he decorated a line of expresso machines) have raised his profile of late.

Then there were the pretty, ladylike wares from – which , senior vice president and fashion director of Neiman Marcus, said ushered in a whole new way of dressing.

John Galliano’s eponymous own-label show tomorrow is being scaled down to a simpler presentation for buyers and journalists, fashion industry sources said.

Normally it would have been one of the most theatrical shows of Paris Fashion Week, but its fate was in question after Mr Galliano was fired by Christian Dior and charged with alleged racist behaviour at a Paris café.

Dior, which holds a majority stake in the John Galliano label, plans to go ahead with its own pret-a-porter collection – overseen by the British couturier before his sudden fall from grace – at the Rodin museum yesterday.

“The Galliano show is cancelled in favour of a presentation on Sunday for the press and buyers,” the source told AFP on condition of anonymity.

Mr Galliano is to appear before a Paris court on allegations of anti-Semitism, prosecutors said this week, as the superstar designer apologised for a drunken tirade but denied the charges against him.

The case will be heard in the second quarter of 2011 and, if found guilty, the couturier – who was sacked on Tuesday by Dior – could face a sentence of six months in jail and a fine of € 22,500.

The British designer was arrested last Thursday in a drunken state after a couple in a café in Paris’s fashionable and historically Jewish Marais district alleged he had subjected them to a stream of anti-Semitic abuse.

Since then another woman has come forward to say she suffered a similar attack in October last year and a video has surfaced of Mr Galliano insulting someone else in the same bar and declaring “I love Hitler”.

Mr Galliano, 50, apologised on Wednesday for his behaviour, but insisted it was not anti-Semitic. He has lodged a counter-complaint against the couple from the incident last Thursday, alleging defamation.

While the fashion world is largely mum about the Galliano furore, Karl Lagerfeld – artistic director at Chanel and arguably the most powerful man in fashion – said he was “furious” over the damage done to fashion’s image.

“I’m furious that it could happen, because the question is no longer even whether he really said it,” Mr Lagerfeld told the influentual US trade daily Women’s Wear Daily.

“The image has gone around the world. It’s a horrible image for fashion, because they think that every designer and everything in fashion is like this,” he said.

“We are a business world where, especially today, with the internet, one has to be more careful than ever, especially if you are a publicly known person. You cannot go in the street and be drunk, there are things you cannot do.”