Lacroix’s problem is that he was born a generation too late. The designer, whose heart and roots remain in haute couture, could never quite understand how to make his fantastical designs work for the modern woman.

The house was set up in 1987 after LVMH’s Bernard Arnault asked Christian Lacroix to build up a bespoke couture house for his luxury goods giant.

Arnault’s choice of designer was spot on. Lacroix had just received a Council of Fashion Designer's of America award for his work at Jean Patou, and many believed he was the next big thing after Yves Saint Laurent. The problem was, and remains today, that Lacroix designed clothes that could hold their own in the V&A, but couldn’t get the tills ringing.

Unfortunately, his ideas, which fused Spanish matador with gypsy fringing, splashes of 18th century corsetry and neon psychedelia (generally all in the same jacket) were never conducive with working women’s wardrobes. And they weren’t cheap either.

To his credit, Mr Lacroix did set up a ready-to-wear line for the couture house, a year after its inception. But even this failed to focus his ideas. The clothes remained astonishingly beautiful but again, there were too many colours, too many puffball skirts (le pouf, as they became known) and too many zeros on the price tag to entice the serious shopper.

His two biggest fans, Ab Fab’s Patsy and Edina neatly sum the whole problem up: there just aren’t enough Beluga eating, stunningly beautiful, moneyed women in this world to keep Lacroix’s fantasy alive.

To make matters worse, the house decided, in 1990 to launch its first fragrance, C’est La Vie. It wasn’t so much the fragrance that was the problem, though it did out-stink all the other early Nineties offerings.

The mistake was that it launched too early for the emerging fashion house and the advertising budget for the first year was $40 million. An extortionate amount, even by today’s standards, unsurprisingly, Lacroix never managed to recoup the money. And at the same time, his clothes were still making a loss.

Unfortunately, nothing really changed in terms of Lacroix’s designs or their ability to sell. His brilliance is unquestionable, but his grip on reality is a little less certain. Lacroix failed to find any sort of reality amongst his own fairytale designs and at the moment, it looks as if it could be a very sad ending to this creative story.

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