Claire Harvey: What's cool these days?

She's wearing a bright floral blouse, and it is a blouse, with shoulderpads, cinched at the waist. The trousers are bottle-green, pleated at the top and bloomy around the hips, then narrowing down at the ankles.

Blonde hair, with dark roots, is swept back from her face at each side and secured with one of those square-shaped little combs that were big in 1987.

Is she cool? That is, does this woman's outfit, seen on one of New Zealand's most fashionable streets at lunchtime this week, prove she is at the cutting edge of fashion, so avant that the garde is all left behind? That blouse - is it a silk Karen Walker autumn-winter 2006 sample, or Farmers, circa 1992? Are the black roots deliberate? Did those unflattering pants come direct from Tokyo's runways?

It's hard to tell - not just because today's fashions are so ambiguous, but because she's walked into a charcoal chicken shop and it's too difficult to stop the car and chase her to demand where she got her clothes and how much she paid.

Not even the shoes give any clues: from a fleeting glimpse they appeared to be shiny apricot kitten-heels with gold buckles. They could be really, really hip, created by the most exclusive leather house in Milan, or they could be vinyl numbers left over from the bargain bin at a Pohutukawa Coast Primary School fete. She could be a stylist who charges $3000 per photo shoot to arrange hairclips, or she could be a delightful trainee dental nurse who has raided mum's wardrobe.

And that boy with a name-tag stitched on his polyester shirt; is he cool or is he on his lunch-break from Wendy's?

How are we supposed to know the difference?

Suddenly, "vintage" doesn't just mean an exquisite mink coat discovered in somebody's Parisian great-aunt's estate; it can be the frumpy blue polyester number your maths teacher was wearing in 1997.

The fashion guru who has been fending off gushing magazine editors all week in Auckland, Cameron Silver (his work of genius was to open the pricey Decades vintage boutique in Hollywood), appeared on television wearing a fawn skivvy and ill-fitting blue velvet jacket.

Silver would have looked perfectly at home on the cover of a Simplicity sewing pattern, but in fact he is hailed as Mr Style, the human embodiment of every virtue holy to Fashion Week.

Thank goodness he has a recognisable face, or the fashionistas may not know what to think.

In London's Independent, columnist Janet Street-Porter says designers are moving towards "continuity" to allay the looming recession. "Seasons are so passe these days, my dears," says Street-Porter.

"Suddenly no one is that interested in changing their coats and shoes just because an irritatingly snooty fashion editor has issued a diktat," she says.

Tell that to the millions of teenage girls who took only seconds to shelve their ugg-boots in favour of turquoise cuff bangles when they saw Kate Hudson doing it in the pages of Cosmopolitan.

Trends are not over. I'm afraid the irritatingly snooty people are still directing those waves of must-have tatt which sweep through the High Street shops every few months. And if you pay attention to the fash mags, there's no doubting what is this year's tatt and what is last year's.

But at fashion's higher end, it has become very difficult to tell super-luxe designer from supermarket drip-dry.

This is not hobo chic, like having deliberate holes in your jeans or dyed-in stains on your T-shirt or frayed edges on your business suit.

It's much more difficult to discern - as if someone had taken the wardrobe racks from the studio where they made Top of the Pops between 1978 and the present, and carefully planted the garments in exclusive boutiques around the world in a covert operation.

The only way to tell, if you're wondering who's cool, is to grab him or her by the scruff of the neck and inspect the label on the inside collar.

It doesn't matter who's cool and who's not cool, but it is quite good fun trying to discern the difference.

That's the point of fashion - it can be wonderful fun for grown-ups, especially those lucky enough to have a bit of spare money.

Of course, it's also wonderful fun snickering at the frightfully frightful folk who take fashion so seriously, especially when they're getting strip-searched by suspicious Customs officers at the airport.

The Auckland Customs officer who inspected the dangly bits of London-based buyer Geoffrey J. Finch clearly reads New Idea. This official alluded to the Kate Moss cocaine-snorting story, suggesting if Finch were a London fashion person he must "see quite a bit of cocaine".

It must have been a humiliating and offensive episode for Finch - but at least we know he couldn't sneer at being taunted by someone wearing bad clothes.

The Customs New Zealand Spring-Summer 2005 collection may just be the coolest ensemble around.