As he takes his front row seat at the Christian Dior couture show this afternoon, Dior’s chief executive, Sidney Toledano, may be hoping he does not get a repeat of his experience following the last show.

That was in May at the Dior Cruise event in New York. It had started out well enough: after a well-received show, Mr Toledano went out with the Dior crowd to the nightclub, Le Baron, to celebrate. He got back at about 1:30am, only to be woken up an hour and a half later by a phone call from Paris telling him about the earthquakes in Sichuan.