Designer Chiuri quits Italian label Valentino, eyes Dior

Her love of exquisitely embroidered creations is legendary, with the silken applications on one of the gowns in last Wednesday's Paris show taking 480 hours to attach.

Some, however, have questioned her love of medieval motifs and called her look "anti-sexy".

Other fashionistas claim this was a deliberate decision to mark her out from the ultra sexual style of her Roman neighbor and competitor Donatella Versace.

In any case, unlike Versace, she claims not to have been a natural show-woman, recalling her first show in charge of Valentino as a "nightmare".

"I was so shy and I found it hard to even talk. The night before I was at home trying to learn English from books" so that she could talk to the press.

Chiuri has since developed formidable media savvy, roping actors Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson from the Zoolander films which parody the fashion industry, onto the catwalk of her autumn-winter show in Paris last year.

She has also admitted to being on Whatsapp "all the time", and as the Zoolander stunt showed, she knows how to create an Instagram moment, the video of their comic turn going viral on social media.