Cautious couture

Fashion The hottest new trends in the spring / summer 2009 collections at Paris Fashion Week.

A model presents a creation by the German designer Karl Lagerfeld for Chanel during the spring/summer 2009 ready-to-wear collection show in Paris on Friday.

Lowering clouds gathered over Paris last weekend, bringing with them unpredictable torrents of rain that prompted the crowds of black-clad fashionistas to scurry underground into the comfortingly artificial light of the Carrousel du Louvre, where the fashion shows were taking place. A more fitting parallel for the present state of fashion would be hard to find, with luxury goods companies huddling for safety as their customers tighten those Azzedine Alaïa belts in the face of economic strife. As Miu Miu's offering of pretty but unremarkable dresses brought the spring/summer 2009 shows to a close in Paris on Sunday, the season ended not with a bang but rather a collective whimper of relief. The extravagances and creative flights of fancy that have marked the Paris outings in recent years have been largely missing, with even the most flamboyant designers eschewing semi-couture glamour in favour of simple shapes, natural colours and fresh, humble fabrics. The fashion week parties were low-key, the goody bags few and far between, and the gossip was of economic strife, the downfall of luxury and speculation on designer departures (Martin Margiela's from his eponymous line, a rumour that has been strenuously denied by his spokespeople, and Alessandra Facchinetti's from Valentino, which, unfortunately, turned out to be all too true).

Some of the season's shows were positively autumnal, which chimed well with the sombre mood in Europe and America; Christopher Bailey, at Burberry Prorsum, for example, gave us rain-soaked models in droopy, dip-dyed trenches and rainhats. Strangely, though, New York Fashion Week had kicked the season off on a high-luxe note, with the likes of Carolina Herrera, Ralph Lauren and Oscar de la Renta using glistening metallics and satins and classically structured and draped shapes. This was, of course, a couple of weeks before the grim truth began to sink in about Wall Street's present predicament. For the fashion pack, the seriousness of the crisis started to become apparent when they moved en masse to London just as one of the biggest investment banks in the world, Lehman Brothers, was filing for bankruptcy. Nevertheless, the British designers used seriously optimistic colours and cute shapes to plough through the gloom. Milan's sophisticated, grown-up style remained intact, too, even if the opulent pattern and blinging jewellery were somewhat downplayed.

It wasn't until the Dior show in Paris that the game was really up. The anticipation ahead of a Dior show is always immense, and this year was no exception, as tribes of immaculately groomed women staggered across the Jardins des Tuileries to the tent in their Dior platforms, Dior suits and Dior bags, and the photographers fought to get shots of Eva Green, Stephanie Seymour, Lily Allen and the other celebrities, both before and after the show. The whole room held its breath, expecting yet another feat of Galliano genius, but this season the designer replaced the glamorous swathes of duchesse satin and quixotic, ladylike hats with tiny flirty chiffon dresses and leanly cut bodices in a limited palette of black, white and the occasional vibrant yellow, pink or orange. They were beautiful, delicate, delightful, but the sense of anticlimax in the tent was palpable.

The easier-to-produce, easier-to-sell and easier-to-wear clothes seen on almost every catwalk are sure to please jittery buyers, who have to take profits into account, but for the seeker of fashion thrills, there were very few of those sparks of brilliance that have previously defined seasons - think Balenciaga's jodhpurs a few seasons ago, or Dior's ladylike pencil skirts. It was, though, a vintage year for the fashion forecasters upon whom so many designers rely for their market-reading skills. With trouser-shapes, colours, dresses and moods almost indistinguishable from one designer to another, the forecasters' self-fulfilling prophecies have never seemed more true, with nothing as inconvenient as a flash of originality undermining them. If you want wearable fashion, you've got nothing to worry about. If you want spectacle, glamour and sheer fabulousness, you're going to have to wait for another season.