Claudia Schiffer sat in the front row at Chanel’s show on Tuesday, not looking a second older than she did in her first Guess ads a thousand years go. Her feud with Karl Lagerfeld long forgotten, her vanilla blonde mane stood to attention, having been whipped into a VIH (very important hair) structure that in its way was every bit as gravity defying as the vast glass roof of the Grand Palais that soared above the catwalk.

The ghost of the late Eighties seemed to be hovering over proceedings, even before the models emerged from the bowels of a concrete cast of a Chanel jacket the size of a small apartment block (and try doing that with dignity).

Like Cleopatra, the Chanel jacket has infinite variety: cropped, elongated, minimalist, gaudy. It’s exceptionally obliging, hence its longevity. This season it’s on the long side, snaking down the hips and in some cases ending not far above the tulip shaped skirts that blossomed beneath it. That’s a late Eighties/early Nineties silhouette if ever there was one, especially when worn with sheer black tights, another piece of Big Bang nostalgia.

The 2008 touch came in the eclectic mis-matching: there was barely a matching skirt and jacket in sight. Instead the jackets were wool, or heavy silk, as reassuringly substantial as a Bentley and with those elbow length sleeves that will forever conjure up images of Jackie O. The skirts meanwhile, made from pleated fronds, whorls of chiffon or what looked puffs of air, seemed as solid as mist. Seated behind a desk, a woman in such an outfit might look like a trophy wife from Bonfire of the Vanities. But from the waist down at least, she’ll be like a wood nymph.

What does this conflation mean? Is the private-jet-loving trophy wife about to discover Ecology? Whatever - all that wafty tulle would look fabulous at a party to raise money for The Environment. After many seasons of wearing everything, particularly “challenging” shapes, with towering heels, the proportions of those tulip skirts and flat mary-jane pumps will take some getting used to however.

Flat shoes continued into the night, Chanel’s witching hour. Jackets may play a lead role in the shows (homage to Coco), but it’s the bags and cocktail dresses that Chanel’s hoards of younger fans would ebay their left kidney for. Money well spent in the case of those with fully functioning right kidneys. Midnight blue or black silk chiffon, with square necklines, draped backs or mini-trains, they gently contoured the body, with a reliable good taste that’s somehow never boring.

One of these would see a woman through an eternity of disappointing dates.

Chanel’s full-on eveningwear is often more experimental, especially its couture. It can’t just be slung on. In fashion parlance, it has to be “worked”. A handful of pleated, folded, draped and torn chiffon dresses were a case in point. In washed-out shades of peach, blue or white they glinted and fluttered like one of those faked Edwardian fairy pictures. Charming, but you’d either have to be a principal with one of the world’s leading ballet companies or phenomenally beautiful to do them justice.

Then came a long silver lame tiered dress that looked like a beautiful, moving stack of saucers, a floor length embroidered silk caftan with infanta-style puff sleeves and a long beaded dress with pockets edged with what looked like an overfed python, but turned out to be wadded silk tubing. This is the demanding peaks of couture to which only serial red carpet stalker can hope to aspire.

It has Nicole Kidman’s name all over it.

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