Bag Crazy

As another dismal summer limps to its soggy close why not cheer yourself up with one of these raincoats?

Click on the image to the right to enter our guide.

Trinny and Susannah might have made the television makeover show a primetime staple, but it appears that their no-nonsense fashion formula is struggling to compete with a new era of fashion TV. The rumour mill is in overdrive this week with talk that ITV may axe the duo after viewing figures for their current show, Undress the Nation, fell sharply; it's been attracting just 2.5 million viewers (11 per cent of the available audience) in recent days.

Trinny and Susannah might have made the television makeover show a primetime staple, but it appears that their no-nonsense fashion formula is struggling to compete with a new era of fashion TV. The rumour mill is in overdrive this week with talk that ITV may axe the duo after viewing figures for their current show, Undress the Nation, fell sharply; it's been attracting just 2.5 million viewers (11 per cent of the available audience) in recent days.

Picture the Independent fashion team loitering in front of the office early last week for no apparent reason – oh, alright then, we were, as Kate Moss is wont to proclaim, having a fag – and knock me down with a feather if we weren't all wearing the same shoes. This was not, thankfully, as embarrassing as it might seem. The footwear in question was not of the must-have variety – we were not like three Wags at a wedding in the identical Chloé outfit, for example. We were not all wearing Yves Saint Laurent Tribute sandals. Instead, ballet slippers were our mutual choice, and they looked just fine and dandy – with skinny jeans, with a candy-pink miniskirt and with a little black dress.

Anglophilia – tweed, tartan, the Union flag, regal ermine, and hunting jackets all made an appearance on the catwalks.

They say that nail varnish, like chocolate, is a treat women can still afford when the economy stumbles. If that's the case, there'll be a stampede when the most indulgent crunch-busting purchase of the day, Chanel's Gold Fiction, hits counters at the end of the month. Chanel has made blood-coloured, black and even navy-blue nails the very definition of chic (for under £20 a pop). Its latest colour isn't for the faint-hearted either. Paint it on and your hands appear literally gilded. But it's not only what's inside that counts. Packaged in a heavyweight glass bottle with a glossy, black squared-off plastic cap, the Modernist sans-serif letters on each and every product spell out a name that, to women everywhere, translates as grown-up glamour: C-H-A-N-E-L.

I'm going to write a word that is hard to compute while we're still in the month of self-tanners, sunscreens and nice, summery bright-pink pedicures: Goth. Yes, the street style that stalked the Eighties is back this autumn. Fashion is into black lace, inky tulle and governess dresses and the concomitant beauty "story" is an updated version of the pale faces and exaggerated kohl-rimmed eyes of Siouxie Sioux and her sisters.