That Gwyneth Paltrow: at Cannes she silenced critics who called her dowdy by rocking up at the film festival dressed to kill. High hemlines, vertiginous heels, gravity-defying frocks: she worked that red carpet as though her life depended on it. The chorus of approval from fashionistas and drooling (mostly male) film critics was overwhelming, and slightly distasteful.

I wasn’t convinced. Paltrow is a very pretty woman, but it is precisely because she is so pretty that the hard-edged, half-hooker look she sported at Cannes doesn’t suit her. She doesn’t smoulder like Catherine Zeta-Jones (who would do sex vixen if she was working at the checkout in Tesco), and she isn’t cool like Drew Barrymore.

What she does have are enviably delicate features, fine bone structure, luminous skin and a sweet, whimsical gaze. This is why she looked so lovely last weekend, stepping out for dinner in the Hamptons: with hair in a simple ponytail, face genuinely free of make-up, a slight blush to her cheeks and that familiar, wistful smile, she looked not just stunning, but extremely at ease (note her choice of footwear: a pair of flat thong sandals in place of ridiculous heels). Oh my, gasped the combined fashion and beauty worlds, how brave; how chic; how unusual.

And, let’s face it, how very irritating. I can’t be the only woman who looks at the endless parade of perfect bodies and faces that has become the movie industry and consoles herself with the thought that they look that good only because they have an army of personal trainers and stylists to keep them that way. Now, my illusions have been shattered. Gwynnie, it would appear, is just naturally perfect. It’s a cruel world.

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