Stella McCartney's Paris show displays a new femininity

Stella McCartney starts her Paris Fashion Week show with the dreary black and navy she is known for, but gets into her stride with a lighter mood and refined tailoring.

As the daily rush from venue to venue begins to take its toll on Paris Fashion Week attendees, there is little more likely to recommend a designer to weary journalists and buyers than a welcome spread of steaming Le Pain Quotidien coffee and croissants before your morning show. Thus a contented crowd thawed out in the Opéra Garnier before Stella McCartney's autumn/winter show, and the response to her collection was largely favourable.

That wasn't just because of the coffee, of course, though the beginning of the show wasn't promising, reprising those masculine silhouettes for which she is so well known, in dreary black and navy. But within a few looks the mood had lightened and the tailoring had been refined, starting with a beautiful, soft and warm-looking white shawl-collared coat. That shape returned again and again in jackets and coats, an effective shorthand for menswear-inspired tailoring.

More interesting was the new femininity and body-hugging shapes that are far from standard McCartney: tight knee-length dresses emphasised tiny waists with clever panelling, stiff peplums and wavy cutouts filled with polka-dotted tulle. A particularly nice touch, for this famously vegetarian designer, was the leather-esque shell top, with wool sleeves, a style that has appeared in real leather a number of times over the past couple of seasons. For evening, a more girlish approach: cloth paillettes were scattered across tulle bases, which looked especially good on a high-necked white A-line overlay with a tight dress beneath. Gold-foiled knits were striking, but whether the stiff, voluminous shapes will work off the catwalk remains to be seen.

McCartney's alma mater, Chloé, was also shown, now with Hannah McGibbon at the helm. It was not an entirely successful outing, though there were certainly some pieces that justified her concentration on casual 1970s styles. The collection was largely based around a python print (and, in some cases, real python inserted into cloth garments), and she used every ounce of ingenuity to find ways to avoid monotony. Yet some of the looks tipped over from "edgy" to simply ugly - something that will no doubt endear them to some of the quirkier fashionistas, but which detracted from an otherwise fairly chic outing.

Pushing the yellow and brown paisley prints or mint-green satin snake mid-length skirts aside (though they were hard to forget), standout pieces included the slim block-coloured knits, super-wide, slouchy trousers, delicate chiffon dresses, belted low on the hips, and a beautiful creamy cape fastened high on the neck with a giant bow.

A designer who can be relied on for pretty, wearable separates, and is consequently dubbed "commercial", is Vanessa Bruno, whose complex draping and layering, neutral palettes and fluid fabrics are rarely groundbreaking but always enjoyable.

Her show at the Palais de Tokyo was just as one would expect, although with some concessions to the raglan-shouldered tailoring to be found across the season. Heavily textured knitwear contrasted with crisp cottons and light matte silks, and the dusty pink, soft grey, stone, white and putty shades were a subtle backdrop for the heavily patterned gold and silver brocade used for the highly structured tailoring that anchored the collection. It may not blow minds, expand horizons or break hearts, but there's a lot to be said for making clothes people might actually want to wear.