The "barbecue summer" might have been a washout, but at London Fashion Week yesterday British designers seemed set for a scorching spring/ summer 2010. That's judging by the bright colours, underwear as outerwear, minis and bare flesh on display.

Following his split from Heather Mills, Sir Paul McCartney accomplished that celebrity rare feat: coming out of a divorce smelling of roses.

Forgive me if I shed a tear, but a trip to Lutyens hurtles the ageing journalist down Memory Lane, to the days when one wrote stories on Adler portable typewriters that went ping!, and one hung out in El Vino's at lunchtime, chatting to someone from a rival newspaper about what the conclusion to your leader should be. Sir Terence Conran's new restaurant is imposingly housed in the old Reuters building designed by Sir Edward Lutyens in 1930, next door to the journalists' church of St Bride's. It's his third venture with Peter Prescott – they've already opened Boundary and the Albion Café in howlingly trendy Shoreditch – and, although this intersection of Fleet Street and Farringdon isn't a natural posing venue for the Pixie Geldof generation, you can be sure Conran knows what he's doing.

Umbrellas were the fashion accessory of choice at the world premiere of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince in London this week.

Springtime: chicks are hatching, lambs are gambolling and the fashion set are shag-tastic. No, not in the way you may think. We're talking shaggy coats, darling – whether crinkly sheep, long-haired goat or full-on fur, it's set to be the cognoscenti's outerwear of choice.

You might have thought big pants should have started and ended with Bridget Jones, but somehow high-waisted undies seem to be everywhere. And this isn't thermal underwear to combat the below-zero weather conditions; we are talking big knickers worn as outerwear, as a fashion statement, with nothing over them.

Oh, we do love to hate the Geldof sisters, don't we? Getting it in the neck this month is Pixie (that's the younger one, in case you're wondering, with the shorter hair and slightly less propensity for saying mind-bogglingly stupid things), whose fashion sense has offended a few corners of the style press already this year.

At this time of year, we can all find ourselves beleaguered by self-doubt, worry and other spiritual verrucas. So let me, Martha Arthur, apply the pumice stone of my famously tough advice. As the 'Dilemmas' columnist for The New Review, I receive the most touching postbag – confessions of trembling insecurity from 'Newsnight' anchormen, existential musings from top models, requests for advanced origami tips from ministers of state... So I am airing and sharing here a selection of my latest correspondence, in the interests of helping us all along the path to happiness, and nothing to do with clearing my credit-card bill. I hope these missives will cheer, encourage and titillate. I mean, enlighten. Love, Martha