High street labels are to stage their own rival showcase during London Fashion Week, hoping to benefit from London's cool quota. Participants might include Frank Usher, Jaeger and Mrs Thatcher's favourite, Aquascutum. The event could be launched as early as February 1998.

Fine-knit polo shirts, I have decided, are rather scrummy. In winter, a man in a long-sleeved, fine-wool polo shirt can do little wrong in my book. But it's nearly summer, so this week we are looking at short- sleeved, lighter-fabric ones, as modelled by Chris (far right), our in- house model, who likes art, the opera, sport and standing around pensively doing things with his hands. Anyway, polo shirts: they aren't as obvious as your bog-standard man's cotton shirt (and easier to wear because they don't need ironing, yeah!), yet they aren't as sporty as those in textured cotton (think Lacoste). At the big, grown-up, designer end, Nicole Farhi and Paul Smith make some of the best, although I have a bit of a penchant for John Smedley ones in the silk-like Sea Island cotton (if you've never stroked someone who's wearing Sea Island cotton, get them to a John Smedley stockist and make them try one on, for goodness sake). So ragazzi, there is no excuse for shabby T-shirts, creased shirts or string vests this summer. AB

It's 150 years since Mr Mackintosh invented the rainproof coat - and unwittingly started a fashion for not-so-practical imitations. The real thing is still made in Scotland, and Tamsin Blanchard looks at some of the best

Take the classic Miss Jean Brodie look, and transport it to the brash, modern, brightly-lit environment of a fashionable New York diner. The result? Designer tweed to die for

TELEVISION; In his first interview since being appointed director of television at the BBC, Michael Jackson talks to James Rampton

There's a nip in the air, the first frost is threatening to bite and you remember your only winter coat (circa 1984) is falling to pieces. Time to hit the high street and check out what's on offer.

For the new wave of Japanese students, London offers freedom, excitement... and second-hand clothes. For just one year, they can live out their sexual and sartorial fantasies, before going home to conformity. Just don't tell mum and dad. By TAmsin Blachar

Sally Kinnes on the Olympic kits that are designer gamesmanship

In Adel Rootstein's factory, the world's most sought-after mannequins take shape. Lesley Gillilan reports

School's in for spring/summer: and, for once, students and grown- ups are taking a lesson from the teachers. Mix checks with stripes, tank tops with woolly ties - and add clear-lens glasses for that scholarly look

This spring, it's going to be wet, wet, wet - but lightweight raincoats, from classics to fashion victims' favourites, will keep you warm and dry. Get ready for the macs of the day

As sales shoppers swarm over stores like a plague of cash-happy locusts, it seems they cannot wait for Christmas to come again. Christmas cards are among the more surprising bargains stripped from this year's display of tempting reductions at Liberty in London.

BUNHILL

SHOPPING at Bicester Village is probably the nearest thing to pillage available in Oxfordshire today. A cutely "architect designed" cluster of shopping units outside the small town of the same name, Bicester is Britain's first upmarket American-style discount centre. Retailers sell off their surplus stock here at reduced prices; the majority of the outlets sell quality clothes. A trip here is a serious business requiring speed and ruthlessness. Because all the stock is surplus from regular high street and shopping-centre stores, supplies are limited. It's first come first served, and shoppers are well aware of it. Dithering in Monsoon over a feather-light lilac jumper in a spider-web knit (pounds 35.95 from pounds 65), one woman asked her friend if they should come back later. "Take it now!" snapped her friend. "If you come back later it might not be here."