NOT long ago, anyone who could thread a needle in under ten minutes needed a muse. Now muses are out of fashion, tossed aside like an old Fendi baguette.

Perhaps designers realised that busy, multi-tasking fashion consumers are not that impressed by women whose sole achievement is to look interesting in a leather bustle. But maybe the muse has gone underground, where she’s frantically updating her image.

Stella McCartney’s show yesterday was dedicated to her new son, and did not mention muses. But Gwyneth Paltrow’s ghostly fingerprints were all over it. Since becoming the world’s most perfect mother, Paltrow, her mind on higher things than fashion, presumably, has delegated wardrobe responsibility to McCartney. The outcome is a collection that looks far more wearable than McCartney's most recent few.

Gone were McCartney’s old street influences, and in were beautifully cut cream blazers and pale grey, wide-cut, high-waisted trousers to please the most exacting preppie. A dazzling pewter trench coat and multitude of dresses — crumpled, baggy, shirt-waisters, fitted with accentuated bustiers, fly-away halterneck, strapless with chain prints that wrapped round the body — answered the call of Gwyneth on holiday, Gwyneth at some awards ceremony, Gwyneth mooching through Regent’s Park on her way back from yoga. They may answer many other women’s wardrobe problems, too.

The Cacharel collection by Suzanne Clements and Inácio Ribeiro was inspired by Frida Kahlo. Given the recent Kahlo exhibition at Tate Modern and the huge Frida effect on last summer’s fashion, they were locking the stable door after the muse had bolted. But the collection still looked fresh, with clashing prints and appliqués, and it gave a new zest to familiar combinations such as smock tops worn with gathered skirts and strappy pinafore dresses with wooden wedges.

The charms that dangled off handbags and giant necklaces are hardly new ideas, but Cacharel is an affordable label that does big business in Europe. If it suffers from being shown with the Parisian avant garde, at least it looks good in the shops.

www.timesonline.co.uk/women
Milan, Paris and London picture galleries

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