Alistair Darling doesn't look like a man overly consumed by problems of a fashion nature. This is probably a positive state of affairs for a Chancellor of the Exchequer. Then again, you wouldn't have thought he'd leave anything to chance. If he'd only spare a moment or two to survey the latest word from Paris (the outpourings of Dior's John Galliano, rather than the Élysée Palace's Sarkozy obviously - but who's to say the former doesn't talk with a greater sense of authority these days?) Darling would see the answer to the current non-dom imbroglio writ loud and clear, in shades of fuchsia and magenta.

Not just Dior either. But Bottega Veneta, Balenciaga, Lacroix...because while fashion generally isditching its recent flashy past, stealth-wealth is creeping up the agenda in the world of accessories.

Actually, who are we kidding? The wealth isn't that stealthy, unless you happen to feel that alligator is tantamount to a major statement about grunge when it comes in pale grey. I don't, either.

Bags with humongous amounts of metalwork on them might be very last year, but all this means is that designers have had to become more ingenious about communicating exactly why they had to charge £1,800 for a tote. So, crocodile, python (with or without Botox), Joan Rivers's old lips, astrakhan - have all been co-opted. No skin is too recherché. I may have imagined the bit about Rivers's lips, but there have been some surreal sights these past weeks. Tights with chunks of glass clamped down the sides, guaranteed to wreck your Zanussi, were a particularly useless but not isolated display of things to do with Uhu. At Sergio Rossi the pièce de résistance is a bootie trimmed with an abundance of fox - think of a woman with a sexually active and not very discriminating squirrel clamped to her heel, and you get close to the image.

At the Dior show in Paris on Monday, bodyguards were required to escort the more valuable bags off the catwalk. That's right. The bags. Celebrities could find themselves competing with cubes of patent ostrich for the best bouncers.

It's an acquired taste, this love of exotic dead things. The official line is that in times of economic uncertainty, the discriminating consumer seeks out products of an even more luxurious bent. The unofficial line (mine) is that faced with the prospect of the average luxury consumer losing their very last credit facility, designers are concentrating on the stuff that only the untouchably wealthy could stomach. Which brings us to the damage that could be wreaked on the country's plusher shops, should non-doms be taxed to the point where they decide to leave Britain for somewhere with more acceptable politics. Monaco for instance. Darling, this is where you come in.

Stripes are back

Every summer the nautical trend gets flagged up and most summers those doing the flagging get left high and dry, with a hell of a lot of surplus stripes. But this time it's going to be different. I say this with considerable confidence because hanging out with the most fashionable types on God's earth for weeks on end is one of the more onerous duties of covering the shows. But at least after all this exertion I can confirm that the stripy top is about to be mega. There have been lots in the audience. I put it down to Nicholas Ghesquière, whose stripy tops for Balenciaga's cruise line last year were perfection (and the wrong side of £700, leaving a huge gap in the market for stripes that didn't cost the same as 18 return flights to Faliraki.)

Good things about stripy tops are: 1) by optically broadening the top half, they automatically slim the bottom half; 2) they are patterned without overtly being, um, a pattern; and 3) they are the ultimate in casual chic. You could even wear a crocodile boot with them and possibly not look overdone.

Sailor trousers are also back, and very nice they are, too, especially Topshop's flattering heavy-brushed cotton ones. But don't wear them with the stripy tops - dressing in the full naval kit is what the style professionals call Taking Things a Bit Literally.

Buy this

Perfect colour, Lanvin-esque shape and an easy way round skinny trousers, this all-forgiving lightweight coat from French Connection offers a surprisingly versatile take on the trench.

£125 at French Connection (08445 573285)

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