Dior autumn/winter 2014 at Paris Fashion Week

Dior autumn/winter 2014 at Paris Fashion Week Photo: AP

Street style - that supposedly spontaneous collision of paparazzi and strikingly outfitted woman - reaches its apotheosis outside the Dior show.

In front of the Musée Rodin, where the show takes place in an elaborately rigged marquee, a succession of increasingly outlandishly dressed women pose - and pose - until someone takes their picture. To a soundtrack of whirring cameras and car horns, they stride theatrically back and forth while police re-enforcements blow their whistles and try not to gawp.

But today one woman stole all their thunder, not with an absurd shoe or hat but with a surreal smile. You can banish Valerie Trierweiler from the Elysee Palace, but you cannot remove the former First Girlfriend from her rightful place in the front row at Dior, where she has been a loyal supporter since her ex first made her a public figure.

Theoretically she is now a private citizen. And as we know, the French do not engage in the kind of prurient speculation beloved of Anglo Saxons.

Unfortunately, no one in France appeared to have received either of these memos. There was practically a rumble as la Trierweiler exited. I saw one traffic cop do a double take as he realised who the Bouncy Haired One was. The crowds were delighted. The photographers went beserk. This was even better than a sighting of Rihanna, who was also somewhere in the audience, but taking her time to come out.

Spotting a lacuna in the celebrity stakes, Valerie seized her moment and dutifully posed for each and every camera, be it attached to a professional TV crew, or a smartphone. This may or may not have had something to do with the fact that the alleged new First Girlfriend, Julie Gayet, was plastered winsomely across Gala magazine, which was handed out free to every guest as they arrived at the Dior show.

It could all have been most frustrating for Raf Simons, Dior's creative director, who had just produced his best collection for the house since starting there two years ago. Stripped of all the complex additions and Dior signatures that have bulked out - literally - some of his previous work at the house, this was a focused and distillation of everything the house, under his guidance, now represents.

The New Look Bar jacket from 1947 is now more of a blazer worn with matching trousers, but no less feminine for that. Sometimes it's extended into a waist-coat dress, or a below the knee length coat, with half sleeves worn with glacé, leather gloves. For cocktails, there was an array of loose, sleeveless cashmere shifts, some with jewelled fastenings. The red carpet versions, although floor length, had a similar ease - there will be no wardrobe malfunctions in the vein of Jennifer Lawrence taking a tumble in her Dior at last year's Oscars.

The story here, was impeccably cutting and dazzling colour mixes. Pale pink and daffodil, fuchsia and emerald, cornflower and red… for the fashion crowd that's better than any Trierweiler and Rihanna combos.