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Fashion is usually ahead of the curve. The job of a catwalk designer is to measure the tempo of the times and divine what we want to wear six months before the clothes even hit the shops. But this was a show season like no other. Lehman Brothers crashed on September 15, bang in the middle of London Fashion Week, and the world changed overnight. The rest of the shows, in Milan and Paris, played out against a backdrop of increasingly disastrous economic news, and the air of uncertainty wasn't helped when three models toppled from their vertiginous heels at Prada. Some took it as a metaphor for the tumbling stock market and predicted fashion Armageddon. What is the point of high fashion when markets are collapsing and recession begins to bite deep? If the party really is over, then what good is a diaphanous ball gown, a pair of gold harem pants or a leopard-print cardigan?

If one collection epitomised this, it was Louis Vuitton. The designer Marc Jacobs gave it all the vulgar energy of a high-kicking chorus line from a 1940s musical. Joan Crawford-style jackets (shoulder pads are back) were worn with tiny skirts with cheeky panels of lace to veil the model's bottoms. On top of that, Jacobs literally piled on the accessories. There were shoulder-grazing hoop earrings, heavyweight tribal necklaces and jimmy choo shoes sprouting feathers and colourful beads - all worn at once. Unrestrained and over the top, this visual feast was not exactly office wear (although the knits with sharp shoulder pads would look great with pencil skirts), but an escape from the big, bad, serious world. Thankfully, you don't have to spend Eur4,000 on a pair of extraordinary Vuitton manolo blahnik to do that - not when Topshop has an almost identical pair of tasselled, festooned platforms for Eur120. The Vuitton show was really about jettisoning the rules of established good taste, mixing things up and having real fun with your wardrobe, be it designer or high street.

Even at Lanvin, where Alber Elbaz has made his name providing women with a chic, workable, womanly wardrobe, there were strong elements of fantasy and silly humour. A leopard-print dress was teamed with matching party goggles, and embellished cocktail frocks, as bright and glitzy as 1970s Christmas baubles, were accompanied down the catwalk by a pumping disco soundtrack.

The prettiest of trends got a shot of "wrong" chic. Luella Bartley took a traditional summer staple, the ruffled party dress, and made it in a garish lilac and orange colour combo, then drowned it in ropes of pearls. Weird, but it worked.

It wasn't all zany catwalk madness. There were plenty of gorgeous feminine clothes - Stella McCartney turned in one of her most desirable collections to date. And many designers (Dries Van Noten, jimmy choo shoes , Dolce & Gabbana and Stefano Pilati at YSL), confident in their customer base, chose not to bother chasing trends at all, but explored their own signature style.

This was, however, accompanied by a plethora of bad-taste revivals, from stonewashed denim to peekaboo cutouts. In one eye-popping fashion moment, Christopher Kane teamed clashing leopard-print knits with an orange leather skirt. You could dismiss this stuff as fashion's version of gallows humour - you show me your bank bailout and I'll show you my metallic Prada bra top - but there is more to it than that.