THE WHITE WOODEN DOOR had the name “Atelier Josette”, with a camellia attached. It introduced the Chanel studio – a re-incarnation of the attic space at the Rue Cambon headquarters in Paris, where the petites mains, or “little hands” as they are known, work away on the craft of couture.

For the first time, the figures in white coats, measuring, cutting, stitching, sewing and passing around models of the body fashioned out of straw, were able to see the fruits of their labours. They were the backdrop to the stage set at the Grand Palais, where they could watch the models walk around in Karl Lagerfeld’s designs for Chanel haute couture.

Who knows if they could remember every hour and every stitch; the gilded embroideries on Chanel classic tweed; the precise positioning of a pocket.

What Karl called “a touch of 19^th-century taste” inspired by the drawings of Art Nouveau’s Aubrey Beardsley, must surely have taken weeks to execute.  And so must the exactitude of the skirt hem, just-so, to reveal the rumpled suede boots and complex appliqués creating a trail of flowers on a short-sleeved tunic top or down the front of matching tweed culottes.

I had an inkling of where this unprecedented display of the Chanel workmanship had come from.

“The Chambre Syndicale should have three days devoted only to haute couture,” Karl had said testily, when I saw him before the show and explained how any label, from the star-of-the-moment Vetements to Miu Miu’s inter-season collection, seemed able to find a place on the couture calendar.

So the hand-workers beside the runway were a “Take that!” statement from the house that has done more than any other to support couture by bringing workers on embroidery, feathers, shoes and hats together under one roof. The floral embroidery detailing worked in horizontal bands made a not-so-simple black dress simply wondrous.

Of course, Karl is much too smart to rest on the laurels of his hand-workers. He had a definite theme: shoulders – a subject that is sweeping through fashion, aided by the dramatically oversized look that Vetements has championed. But the Chanel shoulders were special: a bevelled effect that Karl assured me had no padding, just the magic of couture handcraft. With hair styles from the ever-inventive Sam McKnight pushed up in a bushy top bun, the shoulder shapes took prime position.

Yet for all its exquisite details, the pieces seemed more impressive taken in single frames – say an ankle-length dress with a sheen of embroideries and pockets at the hips to balance the shoulder line. That was exquisitely elegant and eternally Coco.

“It’s a kind of modern, graphic cut-out with no real references to the past,” said Karl, who had built the entire collection on these tipped, square shoulders and culottes – a bottom half that I would imagine most clients will turn into a skirt. A few short hemlines for daytime were in the mix, but the jacket proportions mostly required a mid-calf dress.

And that, of course, is also the glory of couture. It is a decide-it-yourself for clients who can turn to those workers – mostly women, though a few are men – and make a personal choice of length and even fit.

Chanel offered a great deal and should be applauded for producing tailoring and winter clothes as this couture season demands. The way that a curvy coat was trimmed with floral decoration or a white dress, offered absolutely plain except for a hemline peep of white lace, showed the essence of Chanel.

Actress Jessica Chastain was overwhelmed by the beauty of seeing the petites mains at work, saying, “It was so emotional.” But the emotion this season was not exactly in Karl’s clothes, but in the workers who execute his multiple ideas. All hail to the designer for giving a salute to the backroom hands.