“Luxury is the ease of a t-shirt in a very expensive dress.” Karl Lagerfeld coined this permanently true aphorism — one of the sparkling fashion quotes he dashed off in a zillion interviews. Kim Jones didn’t drop it into backstage conversation about his Fendi haute couture collection, but he might’ve, since essentially what he sent out met the Lagerfeldian standard of t-shirt-y elegance; a show of uncomplicated, minimal dressing realized in the most subtly eye-wateringly expensive of materials.

To start: a trio of looks, two tailored trouser suits and a long turtleneck sweater dress with a slashed skirt and sash in a distinctive brown. Only the super-wealthy — other than farmers in the Andes, and the expert fabric weavers at Loro Piana in Italy — will recognize that distinctive shade as Vicuna, combed in extremely tiny quantities by local communities from herds of the protected llama-like animals living in the wild.

Then came tailoring, and a molded bustier in paler shades of slightly pink-tinged beige: Fendi’s specialty calf leather. And then, calmly on with the abbreviated lines of the t-shirt dressing. There were slim tank dresses, made of rolled metallic bugle-beads, asymmetrical long-sleeved patchworks of Japanese silk kimono fabric commissioned by Jones from traditional makers in Kyoto, and beaded deco-style pajamas.

Karl Lagerfeld’s Fendi heritage had indeed had its hand in this collection. Jones explained in a preview that the pair of outstandingly lovely shimmery silver sequinned bias cut slip dresses — one backed with eau-de-nil chiffon, the other pink — had been made from swatches Lagerfeld had commissioned which had been archived and never used.

There was a rationale behind Jones’s choices. He’d had the idea of triangulating the collection between Rome (Fendi’s home), Kyoto (where the reproductions of 18th century Japanese kimono were woven), and Paris (where the trend for Japonisme was famously a source of western arts and crafts up until Deco times), but he didn’t allow that to overcomplicate it.

True, there were a lot of not-so-wearable sheer “nude” dresses. But the majority of this collection was as purely simple and beautiful to wear as Karl Lagerfeld’s timeless dictum laid out. And every stitch as expensive.