Dev Patel, Freida Pinto, Alexa Chung, Mary-Kate Olsen, Liv Tyler, Emma Watson, Gwyneth Paltrow and Mario Testino watch from the front room at the Burberry Prorsum Spring/Summer 2010 Show at Rootstein Hopkins Parade Ground during London Fashion Week on September 22, 2009 in London, England. Photo credit: Getty Images/Getty Images for Burberry

Part of the fun and glamour of Haute Couture, after the magnificent clothes that look like a live rose garden (Dior), or the massive gold lion towering over a stage and a giant sized pearl (Chanel), or the model wearing possibly the most expensive looking encrusted skeleton outfit (Jean Paul Gaultier), is playing “spot the celeb and what they are wearing”.

You’d  be forgiven, however,  for thinking that the Haute Couture front row was a Gossip Girl type of school girls’ day out. There was the young  and leggy Amber le Bon sitting next to ex-Bond girl and fellow Brit Gemma  Arterton, whilst Hollywood starlets Jessica Alba and Blake Lively vamped it up for the paparazzi. Gone are the days of those achingly graceful little gold gilt chair front rows of the master himself Yves Saint Laurent. The elegantly poised, bouffant haired Haute Couture customers, with their legs crossed just-so, and the ever-present ever-faithful likes of Catherine Deneuve and Betty Catroux. Or the doting brightly suited followers of Christian Lacroix, who ceremoniously gave a standing ovation at the end of each show to throw a single rose onto the catwalk and wipe tears of gratitude for clothes that will make them look a million dollars from their eyes.

Front rows used to be a seriously big business. In the days of Versace Couture, it was a veritable celebrity-marathon of famous entourages moving en masse: There was J’Lo, as she used to be known, with P. Diddy, as he used to be known, and Gwyneth Paltrow and Billy Zane, and George Michael and Elizabeth Hurley, and I used to spend a good half hour scrutinising who was who in this fabulous Couture zoo before I’d even got to the magnificent creations themselves. But it’s over to the new brigade these days. Even the ever-reclusive customers have changed their haute couture shopping habits. Where once couture customers flew (private jet of course) to Paris for fittings with the fashion houses, these women now fly the fashion houses to do fittings with them. As Karl Lagerfeld told The Telegraph, “Haute Couture has become a private jet business”. Indeed. Buckle up and get me my Louis Vuitton luggage.