Fashion Update: In the drink

THE NEXT hot fashion accessory is a bottle of water, writes Marion Hume. So puritanical is fashion now that bottles of Vittel, Evian and Glacier (the latter particularly stylish because the bottle is designed by Philippe Starck) have replaced the statement jewellery, handbags and scarves which the truly fashionable now consider just too, too Eighties.

Water, however, is pure and clean and so Nineties - which is why every fashion designer who wants the sporty look on the catwalk is making sure that models skip out flashing pearly-white teeth and clutching bottles.

At Bella Freud's London show, things went one step further. Vittel had kicked in with funding for the show, which the model Kate Moss thanked them for by reminding the audience of this generosity, taking a few on-stage gulps of Vittel while clad in a teeny-weeny fringed bikini in front of photographers.

The bottle of water has also become de rigueur for chic window dressing. At Ralph Lauren's dramatic Polo Sport shop in Manhattan, Evian and Glacier bottles replace the sumptuous antiques Lauren usually employs to create his worlds, enforcing the new store's message of modernity, health and body-consciousness.

It is not only water bottles that are being appropriated. No whippet-thin model was sent out on to the international catwalks slugging back Coca- Cola from a can, but a posse of models did skip out in racy minis made from leftover cans.

Following the active sportswear company Patagonia's demonstration of how to make a sweatshirt out of plastic Coca-Cola bottles (Independent, 30 October), came the Manhattan fashion designer Isaac Mizrahi's recycling suggestion for those who prefer their soft drinks out of cans. Mizrahi proved that recycled clothes can be glamorous with his shimmy- shake dresses, micro-minis and jackets, all made of huge sequins culled from Coke and Seven-Up cans.