Expert Eye: Sera Lilly

A model wears a creation by Sera Lilly. Photo / Getty Images

Sera Lilly has made her name with pretty, girly dresses - one of her pieces is our Viva cover shot today.

At her The Impossible Princess show she set out to ramp up the luxe to illustrate her belief that in a recession there's a need for stronger dressing. And that it should be fun.

She took as her inspiration the reluctant royal that was Anne Hathaway's character Mia in The Princess Dairies and also the notion of rebellious young celebrities breaking free.

So there were tie-dyed T-shirts under sequinned jackets and red-carpet gowns in cherry velvet rendered micro-mini.

This was fashion fun for girls who want to dress up and do the bling thing without taking it all too seriously.

An embossed rose print repeated on jackets, dresses and a rather nice trench.

There was a mock-croc leather-look jacket and snakeskin-print sequins cut in slinky dresses, as well as the to-be-expected floatier dresses and dotted tulle mini-tutus. Black sequinned gaucho pants made me smile.

This was a show of saleable clothes, rather than any grand design statement and the canny young designer said backstage that she'd deliberately set out to keep price realistic by using faux fur and leather rather than the real thing.

"I wanted to do something that looked very luxurious, but was affordable."

Who doesn't want to play princess for a day - given we all know the high-cost of rugging up royally.