WITH so much talk of a return to high-octane glamour for autumn/winter 2011-12, it’s easy to forget the woman who is so confident in her stride that excess is never an ingredient in her style recipe. 

Designers, including Osman, Richard Nicoll and Michael Kors, are answering to her simple but elegant needs by teaming tunics with trousers in an effortlessly chic combination. A relaxed, loose, silhouette covers a multiple of sins, while panels in block colours add interest and depth. 

This is a thinking woman’s trend, for women who want  a look that says sophisticated but not slave to the trends. Balenciaga’s Mondrianesque combination is a contemporary take on YSL’s iconic panel dress, with references to the avant-garde trends of the Sixties, while Peter Pilotto and DVF also played with different fabrics pieced together.

A prevalence of a monochrome palette in the trend points to a sobriety that won’t tolerate fashion’s mercurial fluctuations but a plunging neckline on a white tunic at Michael Kors proves, though, that this is a look that is unexpectedly sexy.