“Luxury is elitist, but what matters is to sell, and we shouldn’t worry too much who we are selling to,” he said. “Throwing money out the window is the only way to get it coming through the door.”

“Luxury works. It keeps people in jobs.”

From Uma Thurman to Kirsten Dunst or a pregnant Charlotte Gainsbourg, Lagerfeld photographed a Who’s Who of glamour for a book published last year to fete the little black jacket created by Coco Chanel in 1954.

Turned into a travelling exhibit, the show is in Paris from November 10 to 25, to coincide with a month-long photography festival, after Tokyo, New York, Taipei, Hong Kong, Sydney, London and Moscow, with Berlin and Seoul to come.

The London show alone drew some 160,000 visitors.