'The It-jean of the moment is patched or patchworked. Not pretty, but on trend'

Down the fashion rabbit hole, things get a little topsy-turvy. For instance: if you want to blend in, you dress up. Turn up to a fashion industry 9am meeting in five-inch heels, age-inappropriate crop top, movement-constricting pencil skirt: nobody bats an eyelid. Turn up dressed down, on the other hand, and people will dissect your look. Are V-neck sweaters a modern fashion statement? Is the trainer the new power shoe?

So when editors and buyers started wearing jeans in the front row at the most recent catwalk shows, it was clear that jeans were A Thing. Jeans never completely go away, but they slip under the radar for years at a time. Their last long-term spell in the sunny uplands was in the Friends era, when Monica and Rachel wore jeans with T-shirts in the daytime, and jeans with sparkly tops in the evening, and the rest of us did the same, while flicking our shaggy, shoulder-length hair. Then there was the designer denim moment, when having the right brand of jeans became a style statement in itself, and we learned to identify the fashionability of a given bottom at 50 paces by dint of the shape and colour of stitching on the pockets. But recently, although jeans have featured in chic daytime combinations (a silk Equipment blouse, jeans with turn-ups, pointy ankle-strap high heels – especially if you shoulder-robe your jacket), the jeans-and-snazzy-top combination hasn't cut it as a dressed-up look. Where it once looked admirably insouciant, it has come to look a little half-hearted. A bit bridge and tunnel. Harsh, but true.

Now, jeans are back. But the new It-jean, the jean you can wear to parties, is not a sexy or flattering jean. Which is annoying, and massively counterintuitive, because out in the non-rabbit-hole real world looking nice is sort of the point of dressing up, but hey – I don't make the rules. The It-jean of the moment is patched or patchworked, a deliberately hoiky kind of jean. Not pretty, but on trend. Not glamorous, but fashionable. Unbelievable, I know. But in fashion we often believe as many as six impossible things before breakfast.

Jess wears top, £49, frenchconnection.com. Jeans, £45, by & Other Stories, stories.com. Sandals, £60, dune.co.uk. Photograph: David Newby for the Guardian. Hair and makeup: Sharon Ive at Carol Hayes Management using Lancôme.

Elbowing your way through post-Christmas sales crowds this Boxing Day? Fear not, our fashion team reveal their shopping tips to help you grab a bargain

It's sales time. But before you head out into the fray, arm yourself with these tips - and tales - from our fashion team. A bargain will be yours in no time.

Jess Cartner-Morley

My sales bargain was a pair of Valentino "Rockstud" ballet slippers, the slightly pointy leather ones with the triangular studs. I got them online at the end of sale season for £75. I would never have bought them for full price – all these years I have been making the classic error of splurging on beautiful hurty-hurty shoes and scrimping on flat shoes because they seem less exciting. But having flat, bottom-of-my-workbag shoes that I loved was actually life-changing. I have resolved to always have nice flats that I am proud of now (even if I buy them on the last day of the sale).

Imogen Fox

My best sales triumph was a black Balenciaga silk top with long sleeves and buttons all the way along the horizontal plane. It was from the Selfridges sale for about £100. I've had it for eight years at least, and I've washed it lots of times in the machine, and it's never got ruined. So my sales lesson is to go for just three brands you know you always like in a big department store, and go for the cheapest thing that fits you. You will find an occasion to wear it, no question.

Lauren Cochrane

I love sale shopping, but I don't go until the last week. This means I don't know what I've missed, I don't watch things obsessively, and so have fewer regrets. When everything is 70% or 80% off, it might be luck of the draw, but that's part of the game. My best score was a Christopher Kane skirt which was 90% off at Harvey Nichols. It was a size too big, but I got it altered and now wear it all the time. With a certain sense of smugness, I must admit.

Hadley Freeman

I'd stalked this red Miu Miu dress on The Outnet for months. Then I got a notice they were having a 50%-off-everything sale starting from 10am on Thursday. So I was at my laptop from 9:50, put the dress in my size in my shopping bag and as soon as it was 10am pressed PAY. And that was how I did it! I got it marked down from £1,100 to £180 – result. Also I bought a Miu Miu blue mohair jacket marked down from £1,300 to £150. But it sadly was too big so I had to send it back. But nothing ventured, nothing gained. When it comes to sales, just buy. You can return later.

Jo Jones

I bought a Burberry navy wool coat, a lifetime investment piece from Selfridges that should have been about £2,000 reduced to £595. I paid for it on my credit card and then cleared the payment in three months. I felt, even with the interest on the card, I got a deal and a timeless Burberry coat.

Helen Seamons

Some of my best sale buys have been online, from the comfort of my bed. It's the only way to do it now. Given that I spend a large percentage of my time (window) shopping for a living, I can't really be bothered with the queuing, pushing, getting hot and bothered at the January sales, especially when there are copious amounts of Quality Street that need eating at home. I got a great pair of sandals from Zara for £20 that look like Alaïa, and no one, including me, ever saw them in store. And a pair of Proenza Schouler heels for £99 from net-a-porter.com that have proved to be both fail-safe and – that holy grail of heels – comfortable all day.

Rosie Swash

British people don't much like to barter. It's hard to haggle with a stiff upper lip. And yet I suggest you try it, based on the following anecdote. A friend of mine decided she didn't want to see anymore of last year's cold snap out without a Penfield Hoosac parka. If you're not familiar, the quilted down of these coats makes you feel as if you've gone out in a particularly stylish duvet. Unfortunately the cost, even on sale, was more than my friend could afford. In a London boutique one day she ummed and aahed over it until the shop assistant finally offered her money off, as the sale was about to end and the coat would be old stock anyway. So if there is something you've got your eye on but can't afford even at a discount, be sure to head to individual boutiques and independent shops at the end of January and make an offer. It's probably not worth trying in Topshop, but away from the chain stores, you never know what a bit of haggling will get you.

Jess Cartner-Morley offers some advice on how to avoid freezing while maintaining a sheer and see-through look

'On New Year's Eve you will be wearing a filmy dress held up by strands of angel hair, with your nipples showing through'

The party dress of the moment, this New Year's Eve, is a spaghetti-strapped slip, or its camisole equivalent worn with skinny black trousers. Slinky but simple, it is half boudoir, half grunge. Think of Kate Moss in her mid-90s heyday. (That slippery, silvery Liza Bruce number she wore out partying with Naomi Campbell, with her black knickers showing, is a fashion touchstone of the season.)

So on 31 December you'll be wearing gossamer silk held up by strands of angel hair, with your nipples showing through. And you'll jump in a time machine and pop into the Groucho circa 1994, right? No. You're going to a pub quiz. Or a dinner to which you've offered to take a  starter (Ottolenghi, obvs). Or – at the wildest – a house party from which you have booked a cab home at 1am.

I hate to sound a party killjoy. These end-of-December days, when Christmas is sort of finished but sort of not, are weird. The nothingness of these days is the main reason New Year's Eve is still A Thing long after adulthood has hit us with the realisation that Jools Holland is prerecorded.

I am all in favour of dressing up on NYE, even if these days I am not promising to stay up till midnight. But in the spirit of New Year's resolutions, I feel it is best to face 2014 square on. That means avoiding two spaghetti strap slip-up scenarios. The first is where you think, brilliant, I've got a dress like that, Topshop 10 years ago, and put it to the back of your mind until 8pm on the night, when you try it on, stare at your pale, doughy shoulders and realise the celeb-caught-in-underwear you most resemble is Cherie Booth opening the door of Number 10 in her nightie.

The second is where you pre-try the dress, and fake-tan and underwear-solution your way to sartorial glory, only to arrive at the party to find everyone in cashmere, and have to borrow something to keep warm. All compromises are not created equal: pyjamas at midnight on NYE I am in favour of; a cardigan from your hostess's coat peg I am not. You will need a layer for warmth and, perhaps, skintone, so sort one out in advance. Another year older, another year wiser, remember?

• Jess wears velvet top, £45, by Cooperative, from urbanoutfitters.co.uk. Camisole, £42, and trousers, £50, both topshop.com. Patent sandals, £240, kurtgeiger.com.

Hair and makeup: Sharon Ive at Carol Hayes Management using Lancôme.

Net-A-Porter's bestselling item of 2013 wasn't a dress, a party shoe or an It bag, but a sheepskin-lined boot by Isabel Marant

The runaway success of the Isabel Marant Nowles boot is, at first glance, baffling. It is kind of… weird looking. And yet it has seen off competition from delectable morsels of fashion candy – chic dresses, fairytale party shoes, It bags – to become online boutique Net-A-Porter's bestselling item for 2013. The Nowles boot is a leather and suede ankle boot, with a sheepskin lining and concealed wedge heel, that retails for £440. It is a Frankenstein design, combining elements from the Ugg boot (the squashy texture and Lego chunkiness) with others from the hi-top trainer (the height and close-fitting silhouette) and a dash of Timberland hiking boot (the bold, rope-like laces). Crucially, it gives the impression of a flat shoe, but the combination of a one-inch platform and a two-and-a-half-inch concealed wedge gives the wearer a significant chunk of extra height.

The Nowles is the latest version of the hi-top trainers and ankle boots that have elevated the Isabel Marant brand from a niche label for affluent Parisiennes into a name with totemic power for a generation of young women (see the frenzied scenes on launch day when Marant collaborated with H&M). Marant came up with the idea as an 11-year-old tomboy, when she wanted to be taller, but to keep her favourite sneakers, and hit upon the solution of pressing pieces of cork into their soles, to give a secret height boost. This is fashion for a generation who hit 30 – maybe even 40 – not yet ready to leave their teenage sneaker-wearing identity behind, but who want the figure-flattering, leg-lengthening boost that a high heel gives.

'This may well be the world's very first It coat. You need to buy one right now'

What do Carine Roitfeld, Kim Kardashian and I have in common? This coat. Nothing else, to be fair, but no matter. Such is the barrier-crashing, agenda-setting power of the teddy bear coat, which may well be the world's very first It coat. Carine, to give her her dues, owned the grungy-fur look – as opposed to the rich-bitch fur look – way before Kardashians or Kartner-Morleys started cramping her style. Her shaggy black number, in which she looks like a very chic Muppet, and her leather Rick Owens coat with voluptuous fox hem have both been street-style stars at Paris fashion week in their own right for years.

But this year, a brown teddy bear fur coat – oversized, where this one is more modest, but a similar shade and texture – jumped straight from the Max Mara catwalk into Carine's wardrobe, where it became a star. When Kim Kardashian launched her post-baby high-fashion makeover, it was her outing in this coat that got the world taking notice. And now – now, well, I'm wearing the high-street version.

So, if you need an excuse to hit the sales this weekend, this coat is it. This coat is the purchase you need to make right now, this instant, before the teddy bear jumps the shark. You will find the scent of this look – collarless or dressing gown-styled, mid-thigh or ankle-length – everywhere you go, once you are looking. The non-negotiable factors are colour and texture. Colour, ideally, should be the shade of strong builders' tea, or cheap station cafe coffee, but most important of all is texture. Forget the almost-the-real-thing fake furs, because this one should be quite clearly no more a real skin than your teddy is a real bear. A cheerful, pretend kind of fur is what you're after; a familiar softness rather than a fancy one.

Once you've got it, you need to style it right. This is not a coat you can work in a cute preppy way, with J Crew cashmere accessories and a jewelled hairband. You need to go a little deshabille, and gather that coat around you like a hotel bedsheet. Ideally you should add heels, and perfume. But – if you have this coat – right now, you need little else.

• Jess wears coat, £125, topshop.com. Dress, £45, by Definitions, from very.co.uk. Courts, £79, dune.co.uk.

Photographer: David Newby for the Guardian. Stylist: Melanie Wilkinson. Hair and makeup: Laurence Close at Carol Hayes Management.

All the front row action and backstage gossip from the menswear shows in London

All the front row action and backstage gossip from the menswear shows in London

This season sees the death of the dandy as designers look to the 80s for a scruffier, more rugged silhouette

Winter soup palette

Why should spring/summer have all the fun with colour? The autumn collections at LCM have included a rainbow of brights – from primary shades at JW Anderson and psychedelic swirls at Craig Green to forest green and tomato red at Christopher Kane. It was Richard Nicoll who provided the best palette though. The winter soup shades of beetroot purple, pumpkin orange and lentil green appeared over knitwear, shirting and Nicoll's now-signature bombers. Wholesome and hearty, just like that soup, these shades also look zingy when applied to clothes. Just the thing to crawl into on a cold dark winter morning then.

Withnail & I coats

The superlong coat – trademarked by Richard E Grant's Withnail and recently stolen by Sherlock – is a big deal next winter. Designers showing under the MAN umbrella went for ankle-length with gusto. Alan Taylor's off-white overcoats came with lurex thread and Craig Green's super-lengths recalled paint-spattered artists' canvasses. Topman's ankle-length coats were applauded by Moriarty himself (actor Andrew Scott was seated front row), which completed the Sherlock-chic circle. Kind of. The question is whether puddle-dipping coat hemlines will catch on beyond Baker Street and late 60s Camden.

Auf Wiedersehen Pet

Suave, posh-boy pinups – Beau Brummell, James Bond– have had their day. Menswear has gone proletarian this season. The heavy, roughly drawn silhouettes of the Auf Wiedersehen Pet Geordies, with their donkey jackets, their broad collars and shapeless 1980s jeans, are now a more relevant fashion reference than dandyism or Savile Row tailoring. The colours on the catwalks – browns, greys, muddy blues and flashes of safety yellow or garish orange – are straight from the builder's yard. Topman's creative director, Gordon Richardson talked about northern dockyards, and about the clothes men wear for practicality rather than fashion, as key for the season. Next autumn, men's jackets are either 1980s bumfreezer-cropped versions, boxy peacoats, or ruggedly oversized and long. The hipbone-length jacket, a silhouette that references suit tailoring, is looking dangerously sissy.

Awkward English boy

Gangly, lanky and probably straight off the back of a growth spurt, the models on JW Anderson had a charming awkwardness. He even namechecked the "awkward English boy" as a muse after the show. His take on the AEB came wearing platform loafers and carrying a bucket bag but others are more the shrinking violet type. Take the schoolboy version in shirt and tie at Margaret Howell and anguished-and-80s in oatmeal tweed at Alan Taylor. The message? Forget cool. Awkwardness is in next season. Wear with pride.

Eighties indie pop

Sure, 90s R&B is still enjoying catwalk airplay but there's been a noticable take-up of an earlier sound too – the type that would have been front cover of the NME in 1984. Alan Taylor based his collection on Stop Making Sense, the Talking Heads film of the same year, while the finale of Topman Design's show had Echo and the Bunnymen's The Killing Moon, also from 1984. Add another Talking Heads reference – Road To Nowhere on the soundtrack at Margaret Howell – and the big hair and oversized tailoring of Messrs McCulloch and Byrne are looking very next season.

Adam

Christopher Kane talked about Adam – as in Adam and Eve – in connection with the themes of molecular structure and creation he has been exploring in his collections over the past few seasons. But Adam is also important, he says, because he represents "ultimate masculinity". As Kane's menswear empire expands – by the time this collection hits stores, there will be a Christopher Kane flagship store on Mount Street to fill – he is deliberately making the clothes increasingly masculine, "because that's what boys want". The forest green sweats were part Garden of Eden, part army camp. The snakeskin – a house-of-Kane code since the early days – amped up the phallic imagery. Adam – ultimate icon of unreconstructed, ungroomed masculinity – is very much a new entry among menswear iconography. Think: what would Adam have worn, if he wore anything?

John Cooper Clarke

To paraphrase the punk poet's latest work composed for the Topman show: "He's a style icon, Jim, but not as we know it." That is to say JCC is a reference in menswear, though not necessarily his pin-thin jeans, sunglasses and giant hair, which would look ridiculous on 99.9% of the male population. The Cooper Clarke vibe– Salford drizzly skies and flat-vowelled grace – is set to infuse the menswear mood. What clothes will that result in? Late 80s utilitarian dockyard stuff of course (see Auf Wiedershen Pet).

Brokeback Mountain

Keeping it real is very next season. Lou Dalton took as her muse the farmhands she remembers from her youth. Corduroy was jumbo and utilitarian olive, denim was acid-washed and bleached, and zip-up, fleece-styled jackets were worn as a layer for warmth under other jackets. The silhouette was an echo of Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal in Brokeback Mountain, with their bulky clothes and workwear-store belts. Dalton said she wanted her coats to look as if they had been "grabbed off the back of a chair". The look is a romanticisation of anti-fashion, nostalgia for menswear pre-metrosexuality. It is also deeply practical: winter clothing designed to work with the elements, not the mirror.

Jess Cartner-Morley offers some combinations for warming winter whites

All the front row action and backstage gossip from the menswear shows in London

Art and romanticism are keynote of soon-to-be CEO's first catwalk collection since appointment – not the bottom line

When, this spring, Christopher Bailey takes over as chief executive of Burberry as well as its designer, he will become the first fashion designer to gain business control of a label that does not bear his name. Giorgio Armani and Ralph Lauren oversee their boardrooms as well as their design studios, but Bailey is the first to have achieve this ultimately powerful role without having founded the company.

Burberry's menswear show, staged in a vast transparent marquee next to the Albert Memorial, was Bailey's first catwalk collection since the announcement, and therefore watched closely for clues as to how he intends to balance responsibility for the Burberry bottom line with maintaining a vibrant design studio.

Intriguing, then, for the designer to pledge his allegiance firmly to art over commerce. The collection, entitled A Painterly Journey, was inspired by Bailey's personal creative heroes: Lucian Freud, St Ives artist Ben Nicholson, the Bloomsbury group's Duncan Grant, and Christopher Wood, painter of coastal scenes in Cornwall and Brittany. It was a roll call of great bohemian artists of the British 20th century: men much admired for their vision and creativity but seldom held up as models of business acumen or financial responsibility. This was a romantic, artistic catwalk show, not a hard-headed one. "Design," said Bailey backstage afterwards, "is the expression of a point of view."

Fisherman's rib cardigans were worn over string vests, a combination Bailey borrowed from the outfit worn by a Cornish fisherman in one of Wood's paintings. A mix of earthy, autumnal countryside shades with clear, sharp brights seemed to echo the palette in a well known Duncan Grant self-portrait in which he wears a deep blue blazer with a mustard yellow waistcoat and a starched white shirt, accented with scarlet pocket square and necktie.

For the catwalk finale, all models were wrapped in plaid blankets in camel, grey, purple and red. On a Burberry catwalk, any check will always be read as a reference to the beige check that defined Burberry in its more downmarket days, but these chic squares were closer to the abstract paintings of Nicholson, whose softly colourful graphics were influenced by those of his friend Piet Mondrian.

Artist's impressions of London landmarks were another recurring motif of the show, suggesting Burberry intends to make last season's homecoming from Milan fashion week to London a permanent move. Intarsia renditions of St Paul's Cathedral and silk shirts printed with hand-drawn maps of London streets provided a commercial angle to this collection – in store, the landmarks will probably feature on sweatshirts, iPad covers, ties – and served as a counterweight to the whimsical furry coats and extravagantly hand-painted carpet bags, which provided a charming catwalk mise en scène but might prove a little unusual for mainstream fashion taste.

The London Eyes and Big Bens scattered through this collection serve to ground Burberry in its British heritage and to appeal to a global customer who wishes to buy a piece of that history. "I love the idea that there will be all these little pieces of London, all over the world," said Bailey after the show.

This careful balancing of the global with the intimate is central to the Burberry brand. The catwalk show was livestreamed all over the world– switch from a 4pm showtime to 2pm, chosen because it enables Burberry to reach a larger Chinese audience.

However, instead of tweeting his inspirations or posting his season's references on Facebook, Bailey still waits after the show and speaks directly to those editors and friends who push their way backstage. In this way, he keeps faith with the traditions of the fashion industry, and ensures that in the story told about Burberry the link between what happens in his head and what is available to buy is kept clear and strong in the public mind.

"I didn't want anything to feel uptight," he said. "I wanted softness and the idea of these artists going on their travels, having their adventures."

'Lush textures in pale colours enhance the sumptuousness and warm you up by several more degrees than charcoal'

You know what's a practical, sensible buy in the sales? A white outfit. No, really. The key to making the January sales work is to restrict yourself to purchases that live in that section of the Venn diagram where two criteria intersect. First, you draw a circle containing those items that are sufficiently in step with coming trends that they won't feel like a waste of money and wardrobe space when you read your first "How to update your wardrobe for spring" feature. Next, draw another circle around those items you can wear now, because it will be winter for a long time, and trying to predict what you will want to wear in May is a mug's game.

There are no pink coats in the bit where these circles intersect, as no trend so closely associated with 2013 will survive long into 2014. Nor are there flimsy frocks – buy a summer dress now, and it will probably turn out to be the wrong one.

The trend that hits gold right now is winter white. White is going to be huge next season – I'm not just talking catwalk, it has been backed majorly by the high street, too – so it kicks your wardrobe into the future. And if you buy something warm, it will look springlike, but feel cosy enough to cheer up January. Lush textures in pale colours enhance the sumptuousness.

In The Goldfinch, Donna Tartt describes the pale-skinned, luminous Kitsey as "sugar-white". That sugar-cube brightness is how winter white should look. To achieve it – rather than ending up with a bleak paper flatness – you need to be smart about shade and texture. Off-white often looks brighter than printer-paper white, for some reason. (Obvious, but often-overlooked point: I'm not going to make you queue for the changing rooms, but please hold the fabric under your chin in front of a mirror.) Supple fabrics project sumptuousness better than cotton, which looks sad the moment it crumples, so textured sweaters and flippy, wool-mix skirts are better than white shirts, when the colour is the point.

Finally, the grubbiness issue. Do you know what? We're not six years old any more. Just avoid noodles for lunch. It's that simple.

• Jess wears jumper, £15, marksandspencer.com. Skirt, £59.99, zara.com. Heels, £290, stuartweitzman.com.

Stylist: Melanie Wilkinson. Hair and makeup: Laurence Close at Carol Hayes Management

As the effortlessly cool model approaches her 40th birthday, Guardian writers and editors pick their most memorable Kate outfits, from the brazenly revealing to the decadently glamorous

There are so many great Kate moments, but I don't think she has ever looked sexier than she did at the opening of the Mario Testino exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery in January 2002. As always with Kate, it's not really about the dress, it's about her. It's about a woman to whom having fun comes so naturally that she effortlessly picks the perfect party dress: in this case, a black Balenciaga number with an apron-style front referencing the house's classic styles, and bondage-style straps at the sides. The dress is brazenly revealing, but she counters that with a brilliantly haughty stare, and with classic Kate faux-artless hair and makeup – lots of black eyeliner, messy bun – so that she looks intriguing rather than simply doll-like. White is a classic accessory with an LBD (think of Coco Chanel, in her black shift and strings of pearls) and the big white fur is a very Kate way of making a classic look just a little more rock'n'roll. Perfection.
J C-M

This, to me, is Moss at her Mossiest: never mind all the talk about her representing "the best of London", or what have you. What makes Moss stand out is her love of decadent glamour, and her ability to carry it off in a way that makes her look cool, as opposed to like Ivana Trump. The images taken in 2004 of her going to her 30th birthday, themed The Beautiful and the Damned, have become iconic and various models have tried to copy the look less successfully (Georgia May Jagger, most recently). By choosing an unusual blue sequinned dress instead of a black one, Moss looks as if she is wearing the midnight sky, and the 1920s cut and cape look retro but also sexy. You see this again with her hair (retro) and dark eye makeup (sexy), giving a hint of what the party itself will be like. But what makes this my favourite of Moss outfits is Moss herself: look at her smile! She knows she is about to have, as she often does, A LOT of fun. And that's what makes her so irresistible.
HF

When Kate Moss turned up to the opening night of the V&A's 2007 exhibition the Golden Age of Couture in a vintage Christian Dior gown made from gold satin, she probably wasn't bargaining on Courtney Love treading on the train and ripping it. Yet the Moss style, attitude and insouciance meant that she simply tore off the bottom section and wore it as a short skirt for the rest of the night – and still looked amazing. Anyone else would have gone home and got changed. In a similar vein, when Moss arrived at the famous Berlin sex den the Kit Kat club and was told that she was attired too modestly, she just whipped off her top and walked straight in. She understands that great clothes are for having a good time in, not museum pieces to be treated like illuminated books from the depths of the British library.
AN

Kate Moss and Johnny Depp (1994-1998) might be my favourite style couple ever. I love them casual at the airport, Moss in a camel coat and cropped T-shirt, out on the town in matching leather jackets or with matching hangovers on The Big Breakfast. They were the definition of their decade's glamour – which came slightly déshabillé. This Narciso Rodriguez dress that Moss wore on the red carpet at the Cannes film festival in 1997 is typical. Grey marl shift, chandelier earrings, weird old-lady bag … On anyone else, this would be a bit uptown, and the height of snore. But not on Moss. Studying this picture – a lot – I think it's all down to the grooming. Her hair is loose and worn over her shoulders rather than in a lifeless updo, and it's contrasted with the bare face and red lippy. Moss's mastery of style was only in its infancy at this point. But its potential – especially when accessorised with Depp – was plain to see.
LC

I suppose being what Jerry Seinfeld would describe as a "jacket-and-jeans man" says quite a lot about me and the fashion world. However I've dealt with enough Kate Moss images to know that her face has an amazing quality when photographed: it complements the clothes she is wearing, rather than being any sort of distraction. Indeed, much of the time you hardly notice that it is her on the cover of that magazine or coming down the catwalk. I've never met Kate, but she was sitting behind me in the Barbican a few years ago during a Michael Clark dance company performance. She was in civvys, of course: her hair was scragged back and she was wearing a fur jacket, animal-print T-shirt, jeans and ankle boots. But she looked great, so much better than in the pap pictures I saw the next morning. Seeing her in the flesh confirmed the relaxed beauty seen so many times in fashion glossies and ad campaigns. And yes, jacket and jeans: the perfect look!
RT

I didn't know, when I first saw Kate Moss in this crumpled sweet-wrapper of a dress – Naomi Campbell on her shoulder, fag in her hand, knickers dipping down her pelvis like a swallow in flight – that it was designed by Liza Bruce. Or that it had been borrowed for a magazine photoshoot and had to be returned to the designer after the party, or that this 1993 party was a modelling awards do in a hotel somewhere. All I knew, as I fell in love for a lifetime, was that you could see the 19-year-old's nipples and her knickers but that that wasn't even the point; that she and Naomi were the good time that was wanted to be had by all. This was what real party girls looked like – it was like the song Girls Just Wanna Have Fun had come to life. After this shot was taken, Kate became the vortex around which every London party swirled, or longed to. (And she's wearing so little that her cigarette, ponytail and cheeks count as at least half of the outfit. God. I just want to drink it in.)
Sophie Heawood

I'm pretty sure this look constitutes the one and only time I've seen something on a celebrity in a photograph then rushed out to buy it. Even in isolation it's a shameful admission, but her look at the 2003 White Tea and Diamonds party was so completely perfect that I couldn't resist. Kate made Bella Freud's knitted homage to 1950s beat poet Allen Ginsberg (and New Wave french filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard on the jumper's "Godard is Dog" reverse) by far the most sought-after cult fashion item of that year – only compounded by Freud's decision to release the jumper in a small, limited run (she put a further 200 on sale in 2007). The jumper is the star of the show here, of course, but the whole outfit is classic Kate. Monochrome Maryjanes from Chanel and chic A-line mini manage to look prim and proper at an aristocratic five-star hotel tea party, while giving an irreverent nod to the counterculture movement that detested everything the event stood for. This jumper lives in protective film in my drawer to keep the moths at bay. I love it more now than ever.
Sali Hughes

The denim industry owes Kate Moss its bottom line. In the middle of the 2000s, Kate Moss was the queen of the skinny jean, and Topshop sold truckloads of its Baxter jeans to young women wanting to "get the Kate look". But this is the denim look that I love Kate in, hair sunny and loose, tucked-in nondescript T-shirt, faded flares. Yes Jane Birkin did it before her but it's the timing of the outfit that is class. She sat front row at the Topshop show at London fashion week 2006 as rumours swirled that she was going to design a collection for the high-street label. Typically, she said nothing. But by wearing wider leg, not skinnies, she was subconsciously setting herself apart from what the Topshop generation were wearing then. She'd moved on. Yet again, she'd silently let her clothes do the talking for her. The rumours were true, it marked the beginning of Moss the designer (a role she will revisit this April) and started a parallel denim trend in one flurry of pap pictures.
IF

Kate's 2011 wedding dress, designed by John Galliano, is a fairytale fantasy. In a way, it's quite unKate-like but when you realise it's inspired by the decadent and debauched world of her idol Zelda Fitzgerald (also the inspiration behind Kate's Beautiful and the Damned 30th birthday party) it makes perfect sense. The dress was the embodiment of every F Scott Fitzgerald heroine and Zelda rolled into one and the workmanship is exquisite – those delicate, shimmering, sequinned plumes snaking up from the hem. Simply stunning. It hints at private Moss, too, because it shows her loyalty as a friend: Kate could have any dress by any designer so the fact that she plumped for out-of-industry-favour Galliano speaks volumes.
HS

The simple black dress with thin spaghetti straps she wore strolling across a street in downtown Manhattan in 2005 is the one I think explains so much of her appeal. Made from a silk jersey that looks both slinky and comfortable, all it needs is a pair of neat, flat shoes, a wide belt and a hint of gold around her neck and bag to look amazing. To those of us who shy away from skin-tight skinny jeans and shorts smaller than our knickers, it is her most attainable look. Simple and yet stylish, even for those of us unblessed with long bowed legs and flat stomach. What could be better? Only this vintage lemon-yellow number she wore to an Another Magazine party two years earlier. Made from chiffon, it's the closest she gets to a "pretty-pretty" dress and yet she makes it look so cool. So much more so than the playboy bunny suit she donned for her 40th birthday, but we can't have everything.
JM

Jess Cartner-Morley shows us a selection of double-breasted jackets that are cosy and cool to wear at this time of year

It's a big anniversary for the 'most powerful woman in fashion'. And her classic design is far from ready to be consigned to fashion's archives

It is set to be a year of fashionable 40th birthdays. Not only is it Kate Moss's this week and Victoria Beckham's in April, this year also marks the 40th year of the Diane von Furstenberg wrap dress.

The dress was created in 1974 when von Furstenberg, who had launched her design career two years previously with a cotton jersey shirt dress and a ballerina-style wrap dress, hit upon the idea of morphing the two pieces into one garment. Within two years, five million wrap dresses had been sold and von Furstenberg had worn one on the cover of Newsweek, which called her "the most marketable designer since Coco Chanel".

At 66, von Furstenberg is the head of a multi-million dollar brand and, as president of the Council of Fashion Designers America, is a key player in the international fashion industry.

The designer is marking the anniversary by celebrating the roots of the wrap dress in 70s Manhattan, with a special edition of "pop wrap" dresses in collaboration with the Andy Warhol Foundation. The pop wrap dressesmarry original wrap dress prints with Warhol images. The Twig print dress, which the designer wore for her Newsweek cover portrait, is embellished with Warhol's colourful dollar signs; the Chainlink print dress which Von Furstenberg wore to pose for her portrait by Warhol, is overlaid with giant blooms from Warhol's 1964 Flowers series, inspired by a colour photograph of hibiscus blossom taken by Patricia Caulfield that has been a recurring motif in Von Furstenberg's collections since 2008.

The 40-year-long story of the wrap dress will also be celebrated in an exhibition which opened in Los Angeles in January, which will include portraits of the designer by artists including Warhol and Helmut Newton. The "pop wrap" collection could signify another 15 minutes of fame for the wrap dress. There is already a significant waiting list for the collection at online boutique Matchesfashion.com, where buyer Louise Reichmann predicts it will "sell out within weeks". Two decades ago, the second wave of wrap-dress mania prompted the New York Times to call Von Furstenberg "the queen of clothing comebacks". Years out of the limelight, the style could be ripe for a revival, and the Warhol-inspired collection hits stores just when fashion is embracing daring, art-inspired looks. The spring collections by Prada and Celine, two of the most influential labels in the fashion world, are full of brash colour palettes and bold brushstrokes which owe more to Pop Art and the exuberance of street life than to the narrower aesthetic traditions of the Milan and Paris catwalks.

The Diane von Furstenberg empire is now a global brand which has long outgrown financial dependence on the jersey wrap dress. Revenue grew by 150% in 2012, a year in which the brand opened 28 new stores and Von Furstenberg was named "the most powerful woman in fashion" by Forbes magazine. But the wrap dress holds great significance as the brand's creation myth, a garment which continues to define the DNA of the label. Von Furstenberg once said "the wrap dress is the most traditional form of dressing: it's like a robe, a kimono, a toga. It doesn't have buttons or zippers. What made it different was that it was jersey; it made every woman look like a feline." It became a symbol of women's liberation in the 1970s, associated with the glamour and natural self-confidence of the designer herself. Von Furstenberg, who split up with her first husband early in that decade, later wrote in her memoir of visiting Studio 54 that "around midnight, I would put on my cowboy boots, drive myself to midtown in my Mercedes, park it in the nearby garage, and join in. I loved the feeling of walking in alone, like a cowboy walking into a saloon, feeling that I was breaking a taboo." Explaining the appeal of the wrap dress to a French journalist, she said, "Well, if you're trying to slip out without waking a sleeping man, zips are a nightmare."

'Think of the DB as a new, ultra-alpha version of the blazer'

I always felt that double-breasted jackets had the wrong body language for being cool. Something about them felt pigeon-breasted and flat-footed, like a nightclub bouncer. But something's changed, and the DB jacket – yes, that's what we call it now. What would you do without me, right? – has a swagger about it that it hasn't had for half a century. It started in menswear, and it's happening for women, too. The DB looks set to be the spring jacket to watch.

Think of the DB as a new, ultra-alpha version of the blazer. A few years ago, wearing a tailored, single-breasted jacket over womenswear was an All New Fashion Look. All you had to do was wear a blazer with skinny jeans and a T-shirt, and everyone was like, check out the fashion genius. Remember? Well, now everyone's all over the blazer, so if you want to impress, you need to stay a step ahead, and the DB pushes the blazer into new territory.

The DB jacket is cut to emphasise and flatter a male physique of broad shoulders, a flat torso and a narrow waist. This makes the suit jacket variety tricky on a female body. One answer is to shoulder-robe your jacket, slinging it over your shoulders without bothering with the sleeves, rather than actually wearing it – a DB is terrific for shoulder-robing, because the extra fabric weights it forward, keeping it from falling off. However, shoulder-robing is for making an entrance, or for trying to catch the eye of street-style photographers, or generally for showing off. Once your to-do list becomes more complex than "Look Adorable", it's not feasible. So, more practically, you can make double-breasted work by picking a chunky peacoat style, such as this one, which is easier to wear than a boxy shape in a lighter fabric. Or look for femininity in the detail: a curve in the lapel, or fancy crystal buttons, can cast a DB in a whole new light.

The DB construction is brilliantly practical. You can still be cosy with your jacket unbuttoned, because you won't be left starkly exposed to the elements in the way you are once a regular jacket is undone. And because you're smug about being cosy, you will have a certain swagger. And swagger is what the new DB is all about.

• Jess wears pea coat, £198, jackwills.com. Shirt, £45, cosstores.com. Trousers, £40, topshop.com. Courts, £69, dune.co.uk.

Photographer: David Newby. Stylist: Melanie Wilkinson. Hair and makeup: Laurence Close at Carol Hayes Management.

Haute Couture fashion week in Paris opens with refinement – and the ever present shock quotient

On the fashion matrix, Versace is located at the exact point where high class meets bad taste. The tailoring, corsetry and embroidery of Donatella Versace's creations are second to none. Her skill at creating dresses which elevate women into goddesses has been demonstrated on a thousand Hollywood red carpets. But what makes Versace compelling is the musky note of sex and scandal which runs through it. To criticise Versace for trashiness is to entirely miss the point, for it is this very element – this salty aftertaste to the caramel-sweet femininity of gowns and sequins – which has made Versace one of the defining brands of the past three decades.

Donatella Versace opened Haute Couture fashion week in Paris in signature bold style. The lofty signifiers of couture, fashion's most expensive and exclusive arena, were present and correct.

A cathedral-sized venue, chandeliers strung like fairy lights from the high ceilings. Thirty two outfits, each created entirely by hand by in the Versace atelier. Fluffy white minks and chubby pelts of fox; reams of double silk satin, suede and tulle.

But the refinement was spiked with acres of flesh, by embroidery deliberately worked to look like body tattooing, by the paparazzi circus which accompanies Donatella's current muse, Lady Gaga, who attended the show as guest of honour, and by catwalk references to outrageous outfits by Gaga's predecessors in pop. Grace Jones was namechecked as an inspiration by Donatella, and Kylie Minogue's infamous hood-and-hotpants look in the video for Can't Get You Out Of My Head was revisited on the catwalk.

"I love to combine the traditions of couture with the daring of contemporary life. This collection has a control and elegance, as well as a provocative attitute, especially from the embellishments that are like tattoos on the skin," Donatella said.

Provocation is always tempered by control at Versace. Despite the shock quotient this was a strongly business-minded collection. The Versace family, who currently own the entire business, have spent the past year looking for an investor who can bring the cash injection necessary to expand the label globally, in return for a 20% stake. It has been made clear to potential investors that creative direction will remain with Donatella, while strategic control will remain with CEO Gian Giacomo Ferraris, who has helped to steer the brand into profit after some extremely rocky years in the aftermath of the murder of founder Gianni Versace.

Three international funds, each of whom are prepared to take a back seat in the running of the company, are thought to be in the running, and an announcement is expected imminently.

The very first outfit onto the catwalk made it clear that Versace has set its sights on expansion in the growing Middle East market. The lapel of a silk satin evening suit, which at the front framed a deep 'V' of cleavage, became a luxurious, sparkling headscarf.

These elegant, hair-covering hoods featured on 12 of the 32 outfits, sending a clear message to potential clients that the house of Versace will deliver glamour on their terms.

The predominance of eveningwear was also a reflection not of the frivolity of this label's thinking, but rather its keen financial sense. With red carpet season fast approaching, haute couture is merely a trailer for the biggest catwalk them all: the Oscars.

Designer Zanini positions label in tradition of French fashion flamboyance at haute couture show in Paris

Fifty years after Elsa Schiaparelli presented her final show in 1954, the house of Schiaparelli has returned to the Paris catwalk. Diego Della Valle, the Italian tycoon who bought the brand in 2007, has hired designer Marco Zanini to give the kiss of life to the brand Zanini has described as "fashion's most attractive sleeping beauty", beginning with this summer's haute couture line.

As dramatic pauses go, 50 years is extreme by any standards, let alone in the context of the relentless forward churn of the fashion industry. But the exaggerated drama of the timeline befits Schiaparelli, a house which takes daring to be different as the very cornerstone of its aesthetic.

Elsa Schiaparelli died in 1973, but her maverick approach to fashion – one dress for the Duchess of Windsor featured a lobster painted by Salvador Dali – has made her a folk heroine to many contemporary designers, including Miuccia Prada and Marc Jacobs.

Zanini's rebooted Schiaparelli was a visual feast, and executed with intelligence. The Schiaparelli archives are groaning with ideas and heritage, most of which is little-known due to the name's long dormancy. And Zanini resisted the temptation to produce a karaoke version of the label.

A straightforward homage might be respectful in a literal sense, but it would be a betrayal of the fearlessness which was the central philosophy of a designer who shocked Italian society by publishing a volume of erotic poetry, an eyebrow-raising move for a 24-year-old female aristocrat in 1904.

Instead, Zanini positioned the new Schiaparelli in a tradition of Parisian fashion flamboyance which runs from the Belle Epoque, includes John Galliano and Christian Lacroix, and ends with the quietly subversive Phoebe Philo, whose furry slippers and pool sliders for Céline were referenced in this collection.

Draped and cloud-puffed silk sleeves and floorlength ruffled skirts harked back to the silhouettes of a century ago; cropped trousers and flat shoes nodded to the avant-garde legacy of the Japanese designers in Paris. The crumpled Napoleon hats, high-arched eyebrows and geisha-stained lips recalled Galliano's collections for Dior, while the bold mix of pastels and strong colour brought an echo of Lacroix. (Shocking pink, the colour with which Elsa Schiaparelli is closely associated, was nowhere to be seen.)

But while it captured the freedom and eclecticism of Schiaparelli, this show did not feel like a coherent collection. It was a mood board of ideas rather than a wardrobe. This is not a deal breaker at haute couture, which is designed around standalone pieces, but presenting a clear seasonal point of view will be crucial to Zanini's success in ready to wear, which shows in just six weeks.

The sense of rigour absent at Schiaparelli was in stark contrast to the spare, disciplined collection by Raf Simons for Christian Dior, shown later the same day.

Simons said he wanted to dig deep into the feminine side of haute couture this season, focussing on "the emotional experience" of couture and "the personal, almost private and unseen world of women." To this end, Dior created a venue where the masculine, high-shine, boxy exterior concealed an organic, cave-like interior, all pebble-curved lines and chalky softness.

At haute couture, femininity tends to mean ribbons and ruffles. But that is not how Simons sees the world, and his success at Dior is rooted in the strong sense of self which he brings to the job. His vision of an ultrafeminine collection was spectacularly detailed three dimensional embroidery, and elaborate fabric techniques which involved a knitted dress so light it appeared at first to be made of chiffon.

But the silhouettes were clean, based around the stark, guillotine-sliced strapless dresses Simons has revived as a Dior classic and sporty T-shirt shapes. Off-white, navy and black predominated, and silk evening gowns were worn with crystal-embroidered trainers, enhancing the sense of cool, understated confidence which suffuses Simons' Dior.

Blame Cara Delevingne if you will, but Karl Lagerfeld's new collection made a radical style statement, and liberated its young models, with a selection of pastel running shoes

• Chanel couture – in pictures

The Cara Delevingne effect has hit Paris haute couture. It is fair to say that the women who wear Chanel's bespoke fashion, where a made-to-measure jacket will set you back around £50,000, can emulate any wardrobe they choose. This season, their icon is a trainer-wearing 21-year-old whose style signature is to make goofy cross-eyed faces in her selfies.

All 65 models on the Chanel couture catwalk – including Delevingne herself, who as muse and leading lady opened and closed the show – were wearing trainers. The boldness of this move by Karl Lagerfeld is such that, for the first time in years, the Chanel couture collection was not overshadowed by the theatrical sets that have become his hallmark. Elaborate backdrops are an effective setter of mood, and the couture audience have found themselves in a futuristic jumbo jet one season, a bombed-out theatre another, each painstakingly constructed within the Grand Palais. But this season, all that was needed to conjure up a fresh vision of style was the trainers, which transformed the way the models carried themselves. The collection was captioned "Cambon Club" after the Rue Cambon headquarters of Chanel and the set, all shiny silver surfaces and low, VIP-room sofas, was intended to evoke a nightclub. In fact, it looked more like a First Class lounge in a Middle Eastern airport, but no matter. The revolving set took eight days to construct and will take four days to take down, apparently, but its central plot device was simple: a sweeping double staircase which afforded models full opportunity to show off their trainer-clad freedom. It was a sight made all the more powerful by contrast with the effect stairs on a catwalk have when models are wearing, as they usually are, ill-fitting sample shoes with high, spiky heels. Then, the anxiety and fear is clear as day on the young faces, two hours of makeup notwithstanding. In their Chanel trainers – each created in the ateliers of Massaro, makers of handmade shoes for the finest fashion houses in Paris – they radiated an infectious sense of ease.

The Chanel trainers came in blush-pink tweed, silver metallic thread, or pale lemon mesh. In deference to the traditions of couture, the laces were transparent chiffon, but the soles - thick and spongey with the scrolled, supple contours made iconic by the original Air Max – placed them firmly in the tradition of sportswear and streetwear. At Chanel, where a flat shoe has traditionally meant a ballerina pump, and all the feminine delicacy that style implies, this was a major statement.

Chanel is not alone in embracing the flat shoe this couture season. Schiaparelli showed feathered pool sliders, while Dior's ballgowns were teamed with crystal-embroidered mesh slip ons with boxfresh-white trainer soles. Even Carine Roitfeld, the French fashion editor whose front row style is revered in Paris, was spotted wearing flat boots to shows this week.

The casual mood is all the more surprising because the January haute couture shows are generally seen as a showcase from which actors can choose gowns for the upcoming red carpet season. Could it be that Karl Lagerfeld, an astute reader of the zeitgeist, predicts that the more relaxed example being set by young stars such as Jennifer Lawrence – who livens up the red carpet with photobombing, and has repeatedly spoken out against the body-image tyranny of Hollywood – will create a desire for a high fashion with a less uptight attitude?

Certainly, the mood established by the trainers permeated the entire show. Even the full-length gowns were drop-waisted, flat-chested and feathered, evoking the spirit of those liberated party girls, the flappers. For day, the Chanel tweed skirt suit took on a whole new personality. The jacket became T-shirt shaped, the sleeves chopped, the pockets and buttons – so prominent when Chanel is doing its traditional power dressing – so subtle as to be almost invisible. The skirt became now A-line and buttoned through, so that it hung like a Sunday-morning denim number. Trouser suits, too, became more dress-down than boardroom. Skinny, ankle-cropped trousers were topped with slightly looser, hip-length tunic-jackets, a silhouette that – worn with trainers – evoked the modern weekend uniform of skinny jeans or leggings and a bottom-covering sweater. It was a look that – pricetag notwithstanding – will feel relevant to a new generation of fashion consumer.