Paris Fashion Week: Vivienne Westwood spring/summer 2013 Vivienne Westwood's sheer knit dresses and jerkins split high at the thigh take over the British Embassy in Paris. Sir Peter Ricketts, the British Ambassador to France, has enjoyed an illustrious career marked by stints as chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee and head of the Diplomatic Service. So it is fair to assume that, in his time, he has contemplated some fairly eye-watering scenarios. Yet until yesterday, when he threw the doors of his official residence to host Dame Vivienne Westwood's show at Paris Fashion Week, Sir Peter had never before encountered the world of La Mode . Standing on the magnificent stone staircase of 39 rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré, which was purchased by the Duke of Wellington for George III in 1814, Sir Peter explained: "This is a magic opportunity to use the building to promote British fashion, which I gather is worth £20 billion a year to the British economy." IN PICTURES: Vivienne Westwood spring/summer 2013 He added: "This is an an experiment to see if we can do serious fashion here. It is the first fashion show I've been to, and I think it will be an experience. That, it most certainly was. Dame Vivienne is an unabashed eccentric, and an attention-seeker nonpareil to boot. Her shows, whilst never before held in a venue quite as grandly Establishment as this, have always proved a magnet for the similarly-inclined. Team Westwood duly turned out yet again yesterday; those negotiating Embassy security included ornately mustachioed men in dresses, slippers and socks, the notorious sixty-something (at least) 'cowboy' who attends many fashion shows with a shifting cast of attractive young women, and one woman who seemed particularly keen to show photographers her ripped-at-the-buttock tights. Eventually, identities established, everyone took their seats in four gloriously gilded rooms dripping with with chandeliers and furnished by a throne, silver services aplenty and a four-poster bed. Paris Fashion Week latest The collection? Well, it was very Vivienne Westwood. To a soundtrack that veered from punk to reggae to classical, long-limbed, crazy-haired girls strode across Sir Peter's parquet floors in four-inch platform shoes and a dizzying onrush of outrageous attire. Sheer knit dresses frayed at the hems, Elizabethan seductress jerkins split high at the thigh and a purple metallic bustier topped by two racy horns were just a few of the eye-catchers. Dame Vivienne's undeniable facility for draping and fold - she has a genius for flattering her women, whatever their shape - was visible too. This, though, was often eclipsed by asylum-worthy styling that saw the models' faces painted with hearts and their heads occasionally crowned with outsized poufs. Sir Peter looked on from his front row seat with his hands clasped together. As Dame Vivienne and her husband, Andreas, finished their triumphal post-show march and the photographers rushed to photograph Georgia May Jagger (who was watching the show too), The Sunday Telegraph asked Sir Peter for his verdict. Without missing a beat, Our Man in Paris deployed every ounce of diplomatic guile at his disposal. "The show?', he said: "it was stunning."