Haute couture today is about spectacle. And the most spectacular of spectacles, inevitably, comes courtesy of Karl Lagerfeld for Chanel. I'm not talking sunglasses here, although they are one of the motivating factors behind the few houses still staging the elaborate, labour-intensive and usually loss-making couture shows. There aren't many women in the market for five-figure frocks.
However, the couture shows are great advertising tools, fuelling mass-market desire for entry-level goods, such as make-up, perfume and, indeed, sunglasses. Hence, they still make economic sense.
But haute couture means something: a rarefied form of fashion, entirely made by hand, which allows designers to utilise techniques unimaginable elsewhere. Nowhere else in fashion can hundreds - even thousands - of hours be spent on a single garment.
It's important because it keeps specialist crafts alive. It's a direct link to the 18th and 19th centuries. It's like owning a piece of history - hence the price point, which can approaches that of a Chippendale chair or a minor work by a major artist.
The clothes at Chanel's spring/summer 2014 couture show were exquisite examples, encrusted with microscopic sequins, hand-embroidered flowers degrading into ostrich feathers, glimmering with iridescence.
