When couture met clubbing at Chanel

Time was, couture was about going to the ball. Now, Karl Lagerfeld tells us it's about going to the club. It isn't exactly a volte face – in that the clothes remain party pieces for beautiful, rich people – but it's further indication, hot on the heels of modernisers Raf Simons at Dior and Giambattista Valli yesterday, that this rarefied sphere will not be consigned to the pages of history and the costumes therein.

And so the Chanel set was tricked out as a designer disco, the show serenaded throughout by a live orchestra conducted by none other than France's electro wunderkind (and one-time Eurovision entrant) Sébastien Tellier.

Haute clubwear is nothing new, but the notion of the several ateliers and hundreds of petit mains that Chanel commands working on these sheeny, techy pieces – in silver, metallic pistachio, blush – and the knee-pads and bum bags worn with them is.

Usually high-end designers take a clubbing trope and use that semblance of 'street' to their own advantage.

But for Lagerfeld, the club was Chanel, the party island haute couture. The music and the surroundings all told us so much. He wasn’t appropriating the club look for Chanel, so much as giving clubbers a new uniform.

None of this is to be taken too literally, of course – these were clothes meant for more than partying. But they did speak to a younger audience. The label's ladylike codes were all there: collars, two piece suits, bouclé and bows. There were even full-length sequinned gowns in those slightly-lighter-than-ice-cream hues.

But the trainers worn with every look, the pads, the high-shine all spoke of a new street-cool, a feel for pretty pragmatism and popular culture which seems to be at the heart of this couture season.