To an extent, all designers expose their souls via their work (a disturbing thought when you think too hard about some of the latex offerings we’ve seen these past few weeks). But Stella McCartney’s collections are so disarmingly personal that watching her shows sometimes feels like an intrusion into her private life. It’s as if she decided early in her career that, since everyone seemed to feel that they knew all about her anyway, she may as well be the first with the scoop.

There were the breezy, girlish early presentations in front of her famous parents and their friends, when she and her collaborator then, Phoebe Philo, first worked at Chloé in Paris and could do no wrong. There were the poignant programme notes dedicated to her mother, after Linda McCartney died; the awkward early attempts to make her mark with her own label, set up in 2001, when the press seemed to be rather more interested in her father’s impending marriage to Heather Mills.

And now there are these shows, in which McCartney, at 35, seems to have hit her stride finally: parent and stepparent are absent from the front row, as are distracting celebrity friends. The programmes still feature their dedications, but these days are addressed to her own young family (she has two small sons).

As a label, it’s fair to say that McCartney suffered from an identity crisis at its inception — ironic, given that its creator has always had such a strong one. But six years in, there is now a discernible Stella McCartney aesthetic: a luxurious version of urban sportiness that takes in elements of preppiness and some sexy, feminine touches.

For next winter, this means big cocoon-shaped coats, including duffels, capes and trenches as a protective outer layer, and underneath them cute little knitted dresses and tunics that, unlike her loose, summer smock dresses, appeared to be sculpted on the body, although not as aggressively as some other designers’.

Like other designers, she’s experimenting with shaggy textures although hers bypass fur. Together with her new organic skincare range, perfume and accessories, McCartney is well on her way to being one of the few global British (albeit Gucci-owned) brands. She is also the only designer in the luxury market not to use leather and has found a way to make that work. If she can find a way to charge the same price for her oversized duffel bags as for designer leather bags, she’s on to something.

McCartney’s vision has always been about the mix. In the 1990s, she was one of the first designers to mix masculine tailoring with pretty, lacy pieces that looked vaguely vintage. It became a hugely influential way of dressing that persists even now. Arguably the new juxtapositions — huge, oversized proportions over seemingly miniaturised ones — suggest a split personality; would the same woman who wears those tiny minidresses heave on one of McCartney’s homely looking knitted cardigans with their long fronded sleeves? Or is this a case of clever marketing that is conceived to reel in all kinds of disparate customers?

In any case, a woman may wear the whole kit and caboodle (or a version of it) if she’s British. After all, it’s a dishevelled, kicked-out-of-the-pub-on-a-Friday-night look that we specialise in. Her gift is to smarten it up and sell it to the world.

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