I really rather liked the clothes at the Chanel show for Paris Haute Couture Week yesterday. Crisp, clean, very white, pretty businesslike.

It was a strong image, with an A-line skirt (flattering for most women) and a neat shoulder, slightly wide, to balance the hips. 

Most of us will have to make do without the lovely bits of extra trim that made the Chanel collection so exquisite, of course: wafer-thin wisps of thread, cut-out paper flowers, crystal beads and all the rest of it (this is couture, after all, not ready to wear), but silhouette is always the strongest message in any fashion collection, and clearly here, Lagerfeld meant business. 

The look reminds me rather of Cardin in the 1960s, or Oleg Cassini (more Jackie O references), especially the standaway collars, which came in all kinds of designs. Very clean, ladylike and grown-up. Clothes for responsible adults, by and large.

Colour was replaced almost entirely by texture - guipure lace, crystal beading, ostrich feathers, all kinds of chiffons and voiles, and stiffer fabrics such as pique (aren't these meant to be autumn/winter clothes?). If you didn't fancy white, there was cream or ivory (OK: not exactly much of a choice), or - a perennial favourite - white with black trim. 

I have always liked this look. One year, I made myself a white sundress with black polka dots, trimmed with black and white striped bias binding - it could be worn with either black or white shoes and jacket, and always looked clean and fresh no matter how hot the weather got.

What's nice about monochrome as a fashion look for this year is that it's eminently easy to copy on a budget (not that this is of much concern to Mr Lagerfeld, I imagine). A quick swap of white buttons onto a black cardi, or vice-versa, a white dress pulled in with a big black belt, or a fluffy white collar added to a black coat and you've nodded to the zeigeist without having to break sweat.

I note, too, a tendency for layering, which is quite appealing - a cropped jacket over a hip-length top, over a knee-length top, over narrow trousers. The key is to keep it close-fitting and neat, rather Nehru in style, rather than baggy and enveloping.  

For a full view of the fashion collections, visit Style.com.

You could be forgiven if you've never heard the name Vionnet. Her house was couture only and its heyday was the 1920s through to the early 1940s. In each of those decades she was a leading light on the Paris couture scene, but the label barely exists today compared with better known marques such as Chanel and Dior, and there is no franchise selling perfumes and tote bags and Vionnet ready to wear.

Madeleine Vionnet, born in 1876, had a tough early life that included poverty, a failed marriage and a dead child. She was already middle-aged by the time she became a famous couturier, having worked at the house of Callot Soeurs, among others - a couture house that was famous for its beaded eveningwear.

Quite plain and plump herself, and not given to dressing in the fashion, Vionnet was also bisexual and loved to dress beautiful women, having a particular admiration for South Americans. She had a unique understanding of the female body, and an architect's abstract interest in clothing as a problem to be solved. The design and seaming of the garment was what interested her, not so much its colour, detail or pattern. She had no interest in creating 'fashion' or setting a style - she only wished to create the most beautiful dresses ever seen.

It is her bias dresses for which Vionnet is remembered today. The bias is the 45 degree angle between the warp and the weft of a cloth. Turning fabric to its bias automatically creates stretch and cling in a garment, and the material also falls more sinuously on the body. Until Vionnet's time, bias-cutting had been used only for small areas of garments such as cuffs, but she revolutionised clothing by using it for entire garments.

She was aided in this by new methods of fabric manufacture, particularly the introduction of tightly twisted silk crepe in very broad widths.

The best of Vionnet's designs of this era have an architectural, intellectual quality that is very satisfying. They don't look much on a hanger, but on the body they cling to every curve in a particularly sensual way. The flesh-pink satin dress above is outwardly modest, but just look at the position of the slit above the breast - it promises considerable exposure if you make the wrong move.

Vionnet's designs went through several phases. In the 1920s, they were based on geometric shapes such as squares and triangles, often with panels flying free, and she used a great deal of embroidery and beading inspired by both Egypt and Greece.

By 1930 she was designing simpler gowns based on triangles, often backless and usually bias-cut - these are among the most beautiful gowns ever made and every one of them is now a collector's item. To see most of them, you have to visit a museum such as the Victoria and Albert in London.

By the late 1930s, she had moved on to full-skirted ballgowns, often of the finest black silk Chantilly lace over fabrics such as lame (left), or with embroidery graduated from waist to hem.

Her daywear is less well known, but this grey wool outfit (right) is a good example - the dress goes on over the head and is cut entirely without seams.

Vionnet closed her Paris house when the Nazis invaded France in 1939 and never reopened it. She was already 63 at the time and for the rest of her life she remained in genteel retirement, living to be almost 100 and dying in 1975.

Her name may be almost forgotten, except to those in the know, but her influence on modern dress design is incalculable.

I could hardly let today go by without a mention of the Sex in the City premiere that took place in London yesterday.

The stars were out in force to promote the new film, expected to be in their finest rig, and indeed they were. It would be nice to have pix, but I can't find any that are copyright free, so click here to see pictures.

I had also better confess at this point to never having seen the TV programme. Other than that it introduced the polloi to Manolo Blahniks, which were already well-known in London, I really know nothing about it. Some say it's feminist and some say it's fluff, and some say it's a bit like Bridget Jones' Diary, but frankly that would be bad news for me - never in the history of time has such utter trash been foisted on women as in BJD.

Well anyway. Sarah Jessica Parker looked very pert and pretty in a green, flirty strapless dress by Alexander McQueen and a mad hat by Philip Treacy. Parker does always have her look together, so this should be no surprise, though I'm guessing this outfit was a touch more for her character than her normal clothes - especially the heels. I liked her as an actress in State and Main, and she was great in Ed Wood, complete with prosthetic nose. In fashion terms I know her mainly for her Bitten range of clean-lined basics that retail for under $20 a pop. All I know of Carrie Bradshaw is that she was written as a walking fashion disaster but ended up becoming a style icon, much to the surprise of all concerned.

Kim Cattrall is also familiar to me as hot totty in many a men's magazine, which is pretty remarkable given that she's 52 - gives every girl hope really. And she looked splendid in a red off-the-shoulder asymmetric number from Viv Westwood. Knowing Westwood, this dress will have been so stiffly corseted that it could stand up on its own, but her frocks definitely make the most of a girl's assets, even if you can't breathe or eat while wearing one.

The other two actresses - Kristin Davis and Cynthia Nixon - are mostly unknown to me (though I remember Davis from an episode of Larry Sanders and Nixon from Igby Goes Down). Davis's red dress was modest and pretty, quite English in fact - a high necked red number with an asymmetric hem, while Davis was clearly showing off her credentials as a breast cancer survivor by wearing a deeply plunging black dress with the top cut to the waist. This is a tad too Hollywood for London, to be honest, but we'll give her a pass. At least she didn't get it as horribly wrong as the WAG tart who turned up in a pink strapless satin mini (why not a Bunnygirl outfit?).

As for the film, we'll have to wait and see - it's not released here until May 28 and when it reaches this neck of the woods it'll be dubbed into French, so I won't be watching it either. But from what I understand, it carries on with the girls in their 40s and in Cattrall's case her character has a 50th birthday. That can only be a good thing but I do wish US cinema would catch up with the French in terms of portraying women in their 40s and 50s. Carole Bouquet, Isabelle Huppert, Catherine Frot, Charlotte Rampling, Monica Bellucci, Kristin Scott-Thomas et al are never out of work in this country, and seeing women in sexy roles even into their 60s is just par for the course.