Strap on a corset, boys! was Vivienne Westwoods cry with her latest catwalk show - a rocking ode to cross-dressing - revealed at Paris Fashion Week on 7 March.

Though the British designer said all her collections were unisex, the most recent drove the point home as strapping male models strode down the runway in stilettos joined by women in grey lounge suits with turn-ups.

The queen of punk likes to get people talking and she told journalists before the show that that was exactly what her latest collection was intended to do.

I think that this again engages the public debate, the feminists and the male chauvinists and whatever they want to say, she said.

Westwood said she would like to see more men in dresses, pointing out that the nude-coloured drop waist column dress she was wearing was sported by a man in the show.

For her collection, the designer rummaged through the history books once more to produce an 18th-century style brown dress worn by a tattooed male model with his bare chest bursting through the bodice.

Also making a catwalk appearance was Game of Thrones star Gwendoline Christie, a pointed choice given the backstory of her on-screen character Brienne, who wore a grey flannel suit and an oversized hat.

A groom in a wedding dress and a bride in a suit jacket closed the show, proving definitively with a heated embrace that, for Westwood at least, cross-dressing is sexy.