Back in the Eighties, before supermodels existed, when a model was a model not a wannabe actress, there was Inès de la Fressange. As Karl Lagerfeld’s muse and the “face” of everything Chanel from watches to perfume, the crop-haired brunette was the epitome of gamine chic. She became one of the first of her generation of models to be so well known that she was simply Inès, founded her own clothes label, and seemed set to be a fixture in the firmament. And then she disappeared.

Now 52, and a mother of two, Inès is back, better than ever, and brand ambassador for shoe company Roger Vivier. It’s a job she could have been born for, combining fashion, communication, a love of luxury and commercial nous. Although she has no official title – “I’m just Inès” – her role has been to relaunch a brand forgotten by all but the most ardent fashion fans.

Roger Vivier was shoe designer to the stars: the Queen was crowned wearing Viviers (an event that has inspired a new collection), and he worked with Dior and Saint Laurent. But by the time of his death, in 1998, the name had fallen into obscurity. It was rescued when Italian business tycoon Diego Della Valle bought it and, in 2002, gave Inès carte blanche to do whatever it took to relaunch it.

“Diego told me, ‘You have to choose the shop, the architect, what we’re going to say to people, the whole thing,’ ” she remembers.

So she set to work. She knew she wanted a strong identity, one that wasn’t quite like any other on the high street. “I think,” she muses, “that fashion and creation are built up not with good taste, but with bad taste. With provocative things. Things that the others don’t do.”

Having settled on unprepossessing premises on the Rue Saint-Honoré in Paris, she hired RMDM, a quartet of young and comparatively unknown French architects.

“I called Della Valle and said, ‘The place is a nightmare, but if you allow me to put a bomb in it…’ ”

Della Valle agreed. The team proceeded to open up the dark rooms, lacquer wood until it gleamed, cover an entire room in silver leaf, illuminate the shoes with fibre-optic cables and, as the coup de grâce, decorate the shop with antiques, Mies van der Rohe chairs and art by Picasso. “Whether you like it or not,” Inès says with satisfaction, “there is no other shop like it.”

In Vivier’s Paris apartment, African artefacts were mixed up with classical art and modern American furniture. Inès scoured the city to recreate the look. The eclectic style she was after came naturally to her: the daughter of an aristocratic stockbroker and an Argentine model, she grew up in rural France, in a converted water mill. Although she found modelling boring and unfulfilling, Inès was glad of the financial independence it gave her.

“It’s not a vocation because you don’t choose, you have to be chosen. The first day you model is exactly the same as the last day. You don’t learn anything,” she says. But she met some interesting people along the way, including a very young Carla Bruni: she remembers going for dinner at Bruni’s parents’ house, when she was 20 and Bruni was 10.

“She’s very bright and educated. Later, I thought she was like the wife of an ambassador in the Fifties, able to talk to anyone. Rather like Caroline of Monaco. She’s probably the most interesting person he [Sarkozy] has ever met.”

She bumped into the now Bruni-Sarkozy at a restaurant a few months back and reports with approval that the French President is being made by his wife to watch Italian films.

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