Meet the Costes, the reticent family who turned Paris cafe society fabulous

For most of last century, the Paris café scene buzzed along uninterrupted. The waiters were old and grumpy, the coffee burnt and watery, the decor merrily nondescript – at best. Then, in 1984, a style bomb dropped, the fallout of which was felt around the world. It was called Café Costes.

Devised by a then little-known designer named Philippe Starck, the Café Costes was a temple to high postmodernism, its vast, faux sky-lit interior anchored by a vertiginous staircase crowned with an oversized, opalescent clock. The designer's now covetable tripod tub chairs were scattered all about, instant icons. At the time, Starck said this new epicentre of Parisian chic was modelled on a "Budapest railway station third-class waiting room circa 1956".