These are the looks the fashion world – including store buyers who have to put their money where their mouths are – deem to be “important”. What you see here are clothes designers believe women will actually wear (as opposed to those 25 metres of tulle ballgowns they would like women to wear).
The labels represented here are the “important” ones (which you could also read to be the expensive ones): Gucci and Jil Sander, plus the softer option of Dries van Noten and the more affordable DKNY. Similar styles can be found in the collections of other “important” design labels not shown here, including Prada, Calvin Klein and John Galliano.But what does “important”, one of fashion’s favourite words, really mean? Important to whom? Well, important to the stores for a start, as they have invested their money in these silhouettes.You will not have to go to Jil Sander for a slim trouser suit like the one shown, which is a blessing for those who cannot afford the prices her luxurious clothes command. You will not need to go to Gucci for a no-nonsense, honed-down dress with a bell skirt. You will not have to go because these looks – as well as being “important” to the stores that buy the originals from the designers – are vital to those further down fashion’s food chain who “imitate” what appears on the catwalk.

Expect to find rip offs of the looks you see here courtesy of your favourite fashion-forward retailers, but with different (and cheaper) labels attached.So there you have it – spring/summer 1995 in a nutshell, or at least in several metres of satin, silk, cotton, chiffon and this season’s hippest fabric, industrial nylon.For the dedicated follower of fashion, these are lean times; the tight forms, slim belts and pencil-slim trouser suits do not leave much space for extra inches.So is spring/summer 1995going to be as unsympathetic to most women as usual? This far into the history of women asserting themselves, is fashion going to decree again that we should aspire to the bodies of girls in order to be stylish? Is mannequin-as-coathanger, rather than woman with curves, again fashion’s icon?I could lie to you. I could tell you that from where I sat on the catwalk’s edge for hundreds of shows and from what I see now in top international fashion, the message for spring is kinder, gentler, softer But it isn’t. The tough truth for any reader who looks at these pictures and cries “Good God, I’d look awful in that!” is that you probably will. While I love all the outfits shown here, I, too, would look pretty ghastly in most of them.

And if you declare the looks here “to die for”, you are probably built like a thorough-bred and thin as chiffon No one ever said fashion was fair.. As dainty handbags, delicately heeled shoes, and a refined approach to dressing return to fashion, we notice that era-specific accessories are making a comeback, too. The fundamental difference between the original and the revived version of the corsage is that today’s creations are fake. The corsage was an essential from the Twenties through to the Fifties when the dbutante was in her heyday The giving and receiving of flowers was a ritual. Saying it with flowers remains a time-honoured tradition, and what better way to add dimension to the spring 1995 looks than with an elegantly pinned orchid, gardenia or camellia.
The designers seem to agree.