Fashion is the healthiest motivation for losing weight,” said Karl Lagerfeld in 2004. This did little to challenge our assumption that food and fashion don’t mix (or to suggest that Chanel’s creative director was remotely sane), yet Lagerfeld’s decision to showcase his autumn/winter 2014 collection in a giant, interactive Warholian supermarket in Paris was a flash of genius.

The lights were unflattering, the Grand Palais freezing, but the concept was impressively simple. Lagerfeld plastered a large letter ‘C’, for Chanel, onto each of the 100,000 fake products on the shelves, including Jambon Cambon (Rue Cambon was the address of Coco Chanel’s flat), Chanel N° 9 eggs and Coco Carbone car oil. The models turned the aisles into catwalks, with the music interrupted every so often by announcements for in-store promotions on coconuts.

The idea was silly, fabulous and clever: an art installation designed to tease the wealthy – “a supermarket is for everybody, the rich included”. It also accidentally became a precursor to “normcore”, the current, dubious trend of “anti-individuality”, implied by the rows of identikit packaging. Incidentally, the supermarket has also replaced the woodland as fashion’s favourite backdrop. In September’s US Elle, Kristen Stewart posed in a mocked-up supermarket, presumably because nothing goes better with this season’s must-have outfits than rows of fresh fruit and veg.

As for Lagerfeld, it’s no secret that he sometimes subsists on 10 cans of Diet Coke a day. It’s just no one expected him to actively promote this eccentric approach to nutrition, as he did in his 2004 book, The Karl Lagerfeld Diet, which involved lots of raw veg, grilled chicken and Greek yoghurt. He lost six stone, for, he says, professional reasons: “I lost weight to become a good clothes horse.”