Now it's back to the 80s

Alexander McQueen. Picture / Reuters

The northern hemisphere's spring/summer collections are hitting the London stores. As a result, those city shorts everyone is wearing in Vulcan Lane are in danger of being, well, so early 2006.

So what do the world's leading designers have in store for us?

You may have heard of it. Power dressing. Everyone, from Alexander McQueen to Hussein Chalayan, and from Marc Jacobs (for Louis Vuitton) to Alber Elbaz (Lanvin), has turned out body-conscious, structured clothing the likes of which haven't been seen since the 1980s heyday of Azzedine Alaia and, of course, the late Gianni Versace.

Clothing is either black (yes, that again) or in full-on, rainbow colour.

Skin-tight leather, thigh-high skirts, waists cinched tightly with broad belts, bandage dresses, underwear as outerwear, and even metal mesh all make an appearance - and will no doubt be loved by any woman lucky enough to be extremely long and slender of limb.

The rest of us can only dream, but, whichever way you look at it, this comes as a welcome respite from fashion's love affair with vintage-inspired fragile romance that looked, for a while, like it might never end.

Not that this is the only option.

In the opposite corner we have the so-called "new minimalism", a pale and interesting take on the old minimalism (think vintage Prada and Helmut Lang), though less austere and not as simple as it seems.

Miuccia Prada still leads the way where this is concerned.

For spring/summer 2006, she proposes oversized, apparently shapeless yet subtly ornamental dresses that, she says, allow you to stop worrying about your figure and enjoy yourself for a change.

How very considerate.

This voluminous silhouette is designed to be worn with pleasingly enormous platform shoes in pleasingly bizarre, quintessentially Prada hues.

If Prada is the European face of minimalism, Calvin Klein's womenswear designer Francisco Costa is ensuring that America's arch minimalist is still in the picture: young and fresh is the mantra here, though not only the young and fresh need apply.

Both Marc Jacobs and Peter Jensen, meanwhile, take the US sportswear tradition as their pared-down starting point. Choose between shirtwaisters, schoolgirl skirts and shirts, and even what resembles an upscale janitor's uniform, and be proud. They both cite Sissy Spacek in Badlands and Carrie as their muse. Freckles optional.

On whichever side of the fence you sit, ensure that, in 2006, you wear your fashion extreme: extremely short, extremely tight, extremely loose, extremely white, extremely simple, extremely elaborate, and so forth.

At Balenciaga, the designer Nicolas Ghesquiere somehow manages to combine all of the above in a stand-out collection.

In Ghesquiere's hands, clothing cut with the rigour usually applied to more minimal design is decorated to the point of obsession.

A similar play between structure and surface detail is also applied at Yves Saint Laurent, where Stefano Pilati is purveyor of an uptight French aesthetic that makes Catherine Deneuve in Belle de jour look relaxed.

Over at Burberry, the cute London Girl look of seasons past has been replaced by a less layered, more sophisticated debutante appeal that demonstrates the art of one-step dressing at its finest.

It is, perhaps, unsurprising that, in a season in which dressing to impress is firmly back on the agenda, there are references to fine art aplenty.

Stella McCartney wraps models in long, printed, rainbow-coloured Jeff Koons paintings; Vivienne Westwood references Rembrandt; the aforementioned Pilati is interested in Dada and Picasso; and at Rochas, Olivier Theyskens looks to Claude Monet for inspiration.

Finally, and, for some, most importantly, the lipstick of the season is brightest pink, as worn by women from whom you wouldn't normally expect even a whiff of girlishness.

And the most desirable jewellery is made of vibrantly coloured ice cubes. At Martin Margiela's spring/summer collection, it melted on to the models' clothes, staining them pink, blue and violet as they moved. Do not, under any circumstances, try this at home.

- INDEPENDENT