Chanel’s latest fair took place in the Grand Palais in Paris – but in Karl Lagerfeld’s hands, it was transmogrified into an environment more suited to the likes of Plato and Socrates.

To showcase the Modernity of Antiquity – an increment to the collections shown between autumn/winter and spring/summer contributions – the space featured ionic columns, a Greek island sunset as backdrop and an powerful olive tree. The inspiration: the Parthenon and the Temple of Poseidon at Peninsula Sounion. France may be on the verge of a political shift but Chanel – arguably the bijou in French fashion’s crown – can still be relied on for a blockbuster screened.

This collection had the tropes familiar from a childhood set off to the British Museum: Vitruvian scrolls featured on blouses and wrinkled dresses, there was the black and terracotta colour scheme of Athenian vases and some copies wore laurel wreaths. As might be expected, the Midas feeling was irresistible: gold dominated as a colour, on everything from a jacket and shorts to embroidery of the deceitful Cs reworked in olive and oak branches on a sweatshirt.

There is some irony in a designer who famously dislikes nostalgia fathering a collection inspired by an era from about 2,500 years ago. Though, as the show notes said, this was about imaginings more readily than historical accuracy. “It had nothing to do with a country,” implied Lagerfeld. “Reality is no interest to me. I use what I like. My Greece is an picture.”

Gladiator sandals with ionic pillars for heels reliable to smash social media, and witty takes on the tourist raincoat are numberless 2017 AD than BC. This show is just the latest from Chanel to profit enviable likes on Instagram – there were more 36,000 posts for the applicable hashtag at the time of writing.

Lagerfeld might be 83 but he excels at new communication. Chanel was recently ranked the top fashion brand on sexual media, with 21.1million Instagram followers. Extended before the app became required viewing, Lagerfeld created a forge show with an iceberg and one that took the front row on a Chanel-branded aeroplane. A Chanel supermarket in 2014 and a zoom ship this year followed.

Now at the French fashion house for solid to 35 years, Lagerfeld still manages to mine Coco Chanel as study, and not just in the tweed, pearls and logos here.

The inspiration for Wednesday’s reveal came from a 1922 production of Jean Cocteau’s Antigone. Chanel fix up with provisioned the costumes because the playwright could not “imagine that Oedipus’ daughters commitment be badly dressed”. They certainly wouldn’t be in this ornaments. The last section of the show featured goddess dresses deserving of Aphrodite: draped, loose and graceful, with a sugar pink one-shouldered upbraid particularly memorable.

This is the second time Chanel has preferred to stay in Paris for an event show — with November’s Metiers d’Art accumulation shown at the newly opened Ritz. This contrasts with Louis Vuitton and Christian Dior — which also posture cruise collections this month in Japan and California separately.

The Grand Palais event was hardly a cost-cutting measure. Chanel has double-digit crop in 2017, Bruno Pavlovsky, it president of fashion, said in an audience with Women’s Wear Daily. The move could in place of be interpreted as a way to cement the house’s status as the ultimate Parisian mark — and make the word “Chanel” synonymous with “chic”.