Jaeger
In its day - the Fifties and Sixties - Jaeger had some groovy moments. What it didn't have was an instantly identifiable signature piece to compare with Burberry's trenchcoats or Gucci's snaffle loafers, which makes designer Karen Boyd's task of reinventing the brand that much harder. Fortunately, this is a designer who gets a kick out of prints and techie fabrication processes - the real backbone of Jaeger's heritage, which began life as a purveyor of pure-wool garments that were promoted as health-giving.

That might seem a long way from coral crepe wool dungarees. And who knows - said item may never see the commercial light of day. Pity, because it was the most appealingly credible version yet seen of a trend that is rapidly becoming a fixation with all designers next season. It also anchored a collection that was upbeat in its spring-garden colours - think of peapod greens, leaf greens and sweeps of deep pink and red - and mood, but never to the point where it forgot about providing women with a comprehensive wardrobe of cleverly flattering, snappy silhouettes. Slim, seven-eighths trousers or peg legs; slouch pants; kimono-sleeved silk dresses with slightly raised, stomach flattening, leg lengthening waists; poppy-printed chiffon tunics, envelope-sleeved paisley tops and ruffle-tie blouses with black maxis - all in silks, cottons or bonded double-faced canvases. While New York designers, influenced by their long hot summers continue to focus on dresses, Jaeger London, mindful of the damp northern European epoch between spring and autumn, brought forth a panoply of wearable, on-trend separates.

Paul Smith
For such an assured tastemaker and trendsetter in menswear, Smith has had a tricky time forging a woman's line with a distinctive point of view. Maybe that's an advantage: not all customers want the items in their wardrobe to scream their provenance. Individually there are some great items in this collection; cream or black slub coats and jackets with bold frogging amply answered the search for a trophy jacket, while his oversized blazers, worn with a nice lack of contrivance over cotton minidresses, made sense of fashion's current hard-edged fixation.

There were also cute lace skirts in white cotton, all with that freshness he does so well. But it goes stale when he gets distracted by other designers' aesthetics. The exaggerated curved “banana” leg trousers (more than a passing nod to YSL) didn't feel right in a collection that seemed concerned with understatement. And what, exactly, was the point of those Lawrence of Arabia head-dresses? Reworking his floral prints on the computer was a smart idea - or would have been a season ago, when Prada, Marni and Dolce were doing it. Ultimately it smacked of a lack of conviction - not something that Smith usually suffers from.

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Nicole Farhi
Farhi has a knack of distilling the prevailing moods into the kind of clothes that appeal to women who prefer not to give too much head-space to Fashion with a capital F. For spring 2009 that means lovely Fifties dresses with gently cinched waists and tiers of tiny frills in graduated colours; it means full-ish calf-length skirts with waistcoats that brought to mind Marni's proportions for this season and it means more cropped trousers: some arrestingly wide, as if wrenched from a Thirties photograph, some slim, such as the raspberry slub linen ones worn with a navy nipped-in blazer - an outfit that would easily make the transition from catwalk to real life.

So far so pretty. But being dependable can be a mixed blessing in a city where the unexpected is the base point. Farhi has her devotees, and over 25 years, she's earned them: these are women who want easy, flattering fashion with a small f. And they got plenty of that. But some of the styling - the tulle leggings and sleeves that had been slipped under some of the plainer dresses, or the Lady Diana Cooper flowerpot straw hats, all there to add the impact needed to sustain a catwalk show - made you wish that occasionally she'd push herself out of her comfort zone.

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