THE former Formula One tycoon Flavio Briatore is facing a High Court showdown after a row with his business partner over their luxury fashion label.

Briatore is the subject of a multi-million-pound damages claim from Angelo Galasso, a designer whose shirts are worn by David Beckham.

The two Italians have joined battle over the fate of Billionaire Italian Couture, the label they launched in 2005.

Its products are aimed at the mega-rich and include £1,000 jeans with gold buttons and a £30,000 crocodile-skin umbrella.

Last year Briatore, 59, was forced to step down as boss of the Renault F1 team after a race-fixing scandal.

The tycoon, whose former girlfriends include the models Naomi Campbell and Heidi Klum, had his life ban from the sport overturned last month. He denies any wrongdoing.

On Friday he quit as chairman of Queen’s Park Rangers football club, although he retains a 20% stake.

Named after Billionaire Club, Briatore’s nightclub in Sardinia, the UK-based men’s fashion label aimed to combine his financial resources with Galasso’s design flair and 5,000-strong client base.

However, a claim form lodged with London’s commercial court last week records Galasso’s complaint that Briatore in effect took the business from him.

When the company was set up in 2004, Briatore held a 51% stake while Galasso had 49%. But in his writ, Galasso claims that at a meeting in mid-2007 Briatore told him he was hoping to obtain further funding for the label from an Italian company called Percassi Group. In exchange for giving up his 49% stake, Galasso said he was offered 20%, plus an annual bonus of 5% of profits.

Galasso claims that when he returned his share certificate, Briatore did not deliver on the revised agreement.

“I’m really, really disappointed,” said Galasso. “Flavio kept saying ‘trust me, trust me’. But he didn’t respect the deal. He didn’t respect me.”

Briatore’s lawyer did not respond to a request for comment.

Ladies, ladies – we need to have a conversation about shoes. It’s long overdue, to be frank, although the issue is a simple one: WE NEED TO STOP BUYING SHOES THAT HURT. Pinchy, pointy, needle-heeled shoes are NO GOOD! They are a NEGATIVE INVENTION! They’re not fit for purpose!

When women buy shoes and gigglingly say, “Of course, they’re agony – I’m just going to have to sit on a bar stool all night, and be helped to the toilet by friends, or passers-by,” it sounds as OUTRIGHT INSANE as going, “I’ve just bought a house – it doesn’t have a roof, of course, so I’m just going to sit in the front room with an umbrella up.”

Womankind must be prepared to take MILITANT ACTION against the shoe designers of the world and their escalatingly ridiculous products. Because, otherwise, all “The New Fashion Trends for spring/summer 2010” really means is, “Chicks – your feet are going to END UP LIKE MINCE.”

All the shoes I wore for this piece were unbelievably painful. The make-up artist and the hairstylists had to stand on either side of me, and prop me up, as I walked from the dressing room to the studio floor – like it was Vietnam, and I’d been shot.

“I bet proper models can walk around in these, and leap up and down and everything,” I said, gloomily.

“No,” said the stylists, briskly. “They fall over all the time.”

Take some shoe-boots from Versace. Every time I tried to stand on one leg, I slowly keeled over sideways – like a sad, fashionable tree being felled. And the Versace shoes were the comfortable shoes. The Gucci pair were so agonisingly difficult to balance in, the soles of my feet were numb two days later. I can’t even bring myself to discuss the Frankie Morello boots – I caught sight of myself walking in them at one point, and I was moving like Tina Turner trying to carry an egg in her pants. I did not look elegant. I looked… elephant.

I don’t blame the designers of these shoes. They must be confused. “Look!” they will say, in their French or Italian accents. “We ’ave just made a shoe that is completely unuseable! The heel is shaped like a six-inch Curly Wurly, and zer toes are so pointy, you will simply ’ave to CUT OFF two toes! Yet the women – they are loving this shoe! They are delighted to pay £600 for it! They are putting their names on waiting lists for it!” Shrug. “We will simply ’ave to carry on.”

So come on, ladies! Stop confusing poor, bloody Manolo Blahnik and, erm, Mr Gucci Shoe! Just refuse to buy any shoe in which you can neither dance to Bad Romance nor run away from a murderer. A shoe should, surely, not make you boring or dead. Not for £600. WE NEED TO GO ON STRIKE FOR SHOES THAT ARE BEAUTIFUL, BUT ALSO ACTUALLY USEABLE AS SHOES.

Because, once you get past the fact that nearly all the shoes for next year are agony – like, seriously, your options are either a) morphine or b) flip-flops – all the coming trends are quite jolly, really. There’s no terribly bad news: waistlines on jeans remain comfortably high, dresses aren’t going too short, the great evil of bodycon seems to be over, and everyone has learnt from the Great Neon/Fluoro Disaster of 2003, and is still keeping away from the lime green and migraine orange. Instead, spring/summer 2010 is a cheering combination of things that make you feel hot with things that make you want to laugh raucously, and go, “Haha seriously? Amazing. My drunk gay friends will LOVE me in this s***.”

Here I am most obviously discussing the tights, which rapidly came to be known, during the shoot, as either “the giraffe tights” or – by the straight men in the room – “the scab tights”. It seems the most noticeable thing about spring/summer 2010 is that legs are going to become funny. Insanely patterned, brightly coloured leggings that appear to have been inspired by Su Pollard; tights with things stuck all over them – when the weather changes, legs are going nuts. If you were thinking about keeping your legs serious, you are OVAH.

Of course, fashion is not referring to this as “the funny legs look”. Technically it’s referred to as “optical and kaleidoscopic”, not “ROFLpins.com”. Worn in conjunction with a similarly “non-shy” tunic, the effect is instantly to make you want to go to a rave, neck huge amounts of Ecstasy and drink orange squash while shouting, “PLAY GROOVE IS IN THE HEART ON A TINY TOY PIANO, PLEASE!”

You’d have to feel pretty ebullient to wear this gear. I am vexingly ebullient most of the time – I have a tiny top hat I have worn, on occasion, to Budgens – but even I would worry about wearing this stuff in the daytime. It would take a lot of energy to front – mainly because, once in the outfit, you feel obliged to look upbeat, alive to life’s manifold possibilities, at all times. If someone cut you up in traffic while you were wearing this outfit, thus rendering you angry and disgruntled, suddenly, your face would no longer “go” with your outfit. And, obviously, being dumped while you have clown legs and a Play School top on would increase the agony by 6,000 per cent – like getting the news that your father has died, but on a novelty phone that’s shaped like a hot dog.

On top of this, one must calculate if one’s legs are already “funny enough” without the tights. There’s a reason why the fashion team have lashed me into those agonising Gucci shoes. It’s because without their 4in heels, my legs – which do look just a little bit like Porkinson’s bangers, God bless them – suddenly looked like Porkinson’s bangers that had been decorated with stickers by a mad child.

Let’s be honest here: “funny legs” is one of those fashion things that work by way of testing how innately hot you are. If you are a sizzling piece of ass, you can take your legs appearing to be having a nervous breakdown, and still look foxy. If you want clothes that “help” you, you will find these tights are a bad friend. But if I am ever invited to a party by the Scissor Sisters where I know someone’s got MDMA cakes, and someone can carry me around all night in a sedan chair, I’ll be right back into the outfit like a shot.

Similarly enervating in terms of “fronting” was the Eighties look. I had a small, weepy nervous breakdown in that dress – not least because it was a size zero, and behind the “glamorous” façade you see in the picture is a load of string and safety pins holding the thing on me. Round the back, I look like a really slovenly student’s backpack. I practically had a bedroll and a tin cup hanging off my arse.

Apparently, this outfit is a “nod to early Eighties high-fashion dresses” – for this summer, we have the option of going totally Alexis Carrington Colby! Personally, I am pro any element of life where I can be more like Alexis Carrington Colby – this is a woman who seduced billionaire Cecil Colby with a fag in one hand and a slice of pizza in the other. She couldn’t be more of a legend if she tried.

But this outfit seemed to miss the point of being Alexis – which is that the woman always looked wholly comfortable in her own skin. Even when punching Krystle in the face in a lily pond. Her clothes gave her sex and power. My outfit, on the other hand, took away around 60 per cent of my power-sex feelings, and you know why? Because it’s got NO SLEEVES.

I tell you, there is little more in this world that makes me ANGRIER than dresses with no sleeves. Nearly ALL dresses have no sleeves! And yet nearly ALL women WANT sleeves. I sometimes think that 98 per cent of female neuroses could simply be eradicated by making it ILLEGAL to sell sleeveless dresses. ILLEGAL. One day, I’m going to open a business that sells sleeves – just sleeves – on the internet, to be stitched on to sleeveless but otherwise perfect dresses.

As for the other trends, though – hurrah! They’re all, by and large, on the side of righteousness. Underwear as outerwear is, for anyone raised on either a) Goth, b) Riot Grrrl or c) Madonna, simply the return of an old friend. At 18, during a year-long phase of Gothic Victoriana, I had a red and black corset that pushed my bosoms up into what can only be referred to as “a tit arse”. For the delectation of regulars at the Good Mixer in Camden, I would often insert a Cadbury’s Fudge into its centre, and prove that I could eat it without using my hands. Oh, yes – underwear as outerwear and I are old friends.

In 2010, however, both underwear as outerwear and I are classier. It’s all “vintage silk camiknickers over tights”, properly boned corsets and visible stocking-tops. One of the looks we messed around with included big Rigby & Peller satin pants with ruffles up the back – an item so breathtakingly beautiful you could imagine getting married wearing nothing but them and a veil.

The outfit we ended up with – corset and khaki trousers with, of course, an agonising pair of shoes – I did not love so much. Sitting down it looked pretty darn hot. Standing up, however, the proportions were all wrong – the tight discipline of the corset contrasted badly with the billowing cloud banks of my arse. “Standing” and “sitting bolt upright” were the only two positions I could assume, by the way. Bending over in a corset is impossible. It’s great for your general posture, but ruinous if you drop a tenner on the floor.

But the 2010 promotion of underwear is going to be saucy fun. I’ve already decided I’m going to do some Second World War-era combi-style cami with a denim skirt, jacket and boots. And carry those Rigby & Peller knickers around in my handbag, to show everyone.

Me in a pink coat is the “new neutrals” trend. Burberry Prorsum went all-out with this look on the catwalk – all ruffles, chiffons and blossom-coloured girl demurery. Perhaps it was the relief of being fully clothed again after the corset shoot, but I loved this look: ostensibly “good”, but also, let’s face it, based on the colour of skin – thus making it look a tantalising bit like I’m wearing a mac made of nudeness.

I suspect I would have to temporarily become a different person to “do” these sorbet colours properly: it’s not a look in which one can smoke a fag, drink whisky in an old-man pub, or climb over some railings at 2am. But then, I like outfits so powerful they turn you into a different person. The only problem is if other people don’t get who it is you’ve turned into.

“Oh, you look very Hepburn in that,” said one of the men at the shoot. I think I made a small growling sound. I HATE Audrey Hepburn. It makes me FURIOUS when people go on about how modern women should have more of Hepburn’s reserve, poise and grace – and then quack on about Breakfast at Tiffany’s: in which she plays A DEPRESSIVE PROSTITUTE ALONE WITH HER CAT. Yeah – that’s one role model I can do without, thanks.

As for safari – the leopard skin and attitude – I bloody loved that outfit. It was a no-brainer. Around 50 per cent of my wardrobe is leopard skin, anyway – I like its cheerful overtones of both barmaid and stuffed toy animal: their Venn diagram intersection is what I call “my core being”.

Teamed with big hair and, obviously, a pair of boots that weren’t agonisingly painful, I would have walked straight out of the photographer’s studio and into work/the pub/the witness box of a high-profile murder trial on EastEnders in that. That outfit was me, but newer, and better. And that’s what – when it works – fashion is supposed to be.

Well, that, and what truly separates us from the apes – who’ve just never thought of zazzing up an outfit with a knotted belt and a contrasty, clashy-clashy tote bag. Idiots.

As you read this, London Fashion Week is happening across town, and the world’s most fashion-forward girlies are teetering around the tents in the spring/summer trends (leather shorts, anyone? Flippy skirt with unstructured top? Can you do luxe sportswear without looking like you’re going for a jog?), while simultaneously throwing themselves into next season as the autumn/winter catwalks appear before them. Minimalism, probably. Do keep up at the back.

Then you know you’re really stuffed when you see a picture of Alexa Chung in clogs, man’s shirt buttoned to the top, and some micro frayed denim thing going on round the pelvis, and instead of thinking, “Yup, loving that, taxi to Topshop,” you think, “What does she look like? How did she even get to that place where she thought that would work?”

Sometimes, fashion feels like a big old express train that you’re just not on — it zoomed through the station, you totally missed it and now you’re stuck on the platform with your 2008 heels and a rubbish bag that’s got “Noughties Excessive Consumption” written all over it. Feel like it’s over for you? Well, no, it’s not. Believe me: you can escape.

Hair As any stylist will tell you, if you need to get out of a rut, chop it off. They are three words that strike fear into any sane person’s heart, but go on, just try a couple of inches: takes years off.

Nails Paint ’em beige. Chanel’s Particulière is the colour of the season, but try something a bit pinker if that frightens you. It’s a pretty cheap way of getting your hands, at least, up to trend.

Lips Do red. Or pink, or orange. Suddenly, your black uniform has been updated.

Clothes Phone a friend, crack open a bottle and think Carrie moving out of her Manhattan flat before she marries Big. Bin, swap, recycle everything. If you’re in any doubt, bin it.

Style Do things you’ve never done before. Put a knit under a summer dress. Wear some woolly tights with your sandals. Roll up your trousers. Scrunch up your sleeves.

Finally, make a resolution not to get dressed in a hurry. Your aim is to be that alpha female who lays out her outfits for the whole week on a Sunday night. That can be you! And it will be fun! You will never put on yesterday’s clothes from the floor again!

There, you’re fixed. Happy fashion week.

“Work. Eyes. No question,” etc, etc.

Which might sound unedifying, even tawdry – but you should hear the second row, which is normally occupied by fashion directors and editors of lesser magazines. (Rule one at the collections: if you think you’re front row, never, ever accept a second-row seat; people will notice and you’ll sit there for ever more. Which led to one high priestess of fashion [second row] – sadly no longer with us – hovering by the front row at each show till the lights went down, when she would dive in beside us and wriggle her bottom along until she got her seat.) Of course, fashion directors always know more about fashion than editors-in-chief (who have a whole magazine to get out), and so the FDs’ critiques can have more edge. But then there’s the third row, typically comprising stylists who literally know the industry inside out, who get paid a pittance and stay in fleapit hotels miles from the FDs’ and eds’ five-star accommodation, and tolerate it because fashion is their vocation; and so on, right back to the fashion students standing at the back who try to steal the gifts left on the front-row seats.

Which might make you think the fashion world is a jungle, but the metaphor I always prefer is an exotic reef: breathtakingly beautiful, astonishing, almost silent and alien, populated by weirdly shaped, wonderful beings, by ugly rock-dwellers and a few octopuses, but also by multihued, ethereally delicate creatures who can exist only here. Normal human beings can only live temporarily here, artificially – like heterosexual men, for example, who stand out like, well, a frogman in flippers at a fashion show. It is another world, and if its denizens attack each other, or prey on lesser beings, or function as parasites, or occasionally cruise serenely overhead, like leviathans, appearing never to eat but taking everything in, it’s a milieu where you can spend ten years on the front row and never quite be accepted as an über-fashionista. Although, around my 14th collections, maybe 300 must-see shows later (an editor-in-chief never does the small ones), I noticed that, in the fashion bus afterwards, the FDs began obliquely to solicit my opinion on a more than usually directional Zac Posen show.

Meanwhile, the stylist who critiqued my fishnets now works in a pub. In Kent. After being promoted, she had a breakdown involving huge debts (shoes, coats) and alcohol. At one point, she was living in a hostel for the homeless, where she was visited by one person who works in fashion – and me. Fashion never cares for the ill, the weak, the old: it’s strictly about the beautiful.

London Fashion Week opened in a sombre mood this morning as British Fashion Council chairman Harold Tillman led a minute’s silence in tribute to the designer Alexander McQueen.

McQueen, known by his real first name of Lee, started his career in the capital and was one of the city’s most feted fashion exports, was found hanged at his London home last week.

Hours before Fashion Week opened a further tribute to the British designer came from supermodel Kate Moss, who took to the catwalk wearing one of McQueen's designs for the Fashion For Relief Haiti charity event.

As the dress was auctioned Moss, who was a bridesmaid at the designer's 2000 Ibiza wedding to filmmaker George Forsyth, wept. The dress was bought by Arcadia boss Sir Phillip Green for £100,000.

Opening the six-day London fashion event, Mr Tillman said: “His impact on London and this international fashion industry has been extraordinary. And he will be sorely missed. I know that we will all remember his incredible achievements and what he did for fashion here in London.”

“He proved that this industry and this city is one of opportunity, he left school with one O-Level and, with a good mix of determination, hard work and genius, he became and will remain one of London’s leading lights.

“He has inspired so many to follow and establish their own collection and has influenced many designers. To ensure London, his home city, continues to grow as a global fashion centre will be a fitting tribute to this brilliant man.”

Prime Minister's wife Sarah Brown, who has won praise for her support of British designers and the London fashion scene, echoed his words, saying: “I have no doubt this will be a creative and inspiring London Fashion Week and also a reflective time with the passing of Lee McQueen.”

McQueen had not shown a collection in London since 2001, preferring instead to exhibit in New York and then Paris, but this week organisers said they would pay a “simple and respectful” tribute in keeping with the McQueen family’s wishes.

Designers, buyers, stylists and journalists attending London Fashion Week will have the opportunity to pin messages of condolence on a board at main venue Somerset House, while at the On|Off event at Victoria House they will be able to view images from his collections on forty iPod touches attached to a wall. Elsewhere, luxury department store Liberty has dressed a tribute window with a giant Union Jack, a bright blue dress and the words “For McQueen and country”.

It is thought the final collection created by the designer will be shown in private to invited guests in Paris next month. Yesterday, PPR, the French luxury group with a controlling stake in the designer’s companies, said that it planned to build on the McQueen brand. President François-Henri Pinault said: “The Alexander McQueen trademark will live on. This would be the best tribute that we could offer to him.”

London Fashion Week runs until February 24 and will see designers Vivienne Westwood, Matthew Williamson, Christopher Kane and Aquascutum show collections. British brand Burberry will also show its collection in London, returning for a second time to the capital after eight years in Milan.

This year, those unable to get tickets for the event will not miss out altogether. Burberry, alongside a host of other British designers will live-stream their shows over the internet. For the first time, the British Fashion Council has put together a live schedule so web users can tune in to events as they happen.

After conducting its first highly scientific London Fashion Week census, The Times is bursting with details about the shows that start tomorrow. You¹ll have to wait until the models step on to the catwalk for the visual shape of things to come. In the meantime, we have the scoop on everything from the phrases our 15 willing designers use too much (³James, off the fabrics!² ‹ Heikki Salonen to his dog ‹ may well be our favourite), to whether they pay their models in sterling or clothes. Now that we know what they¹ve been eating, our understanding of their aesthetic vision has deepened considerably. Kinder Aggugini is an urbane Italian sustained by Oreo cookies, while the increasingly slender Julien Macdonald survives the long days on calorie-controlled micro-portions delivered directly to his door.

Other mysteries we uncovered: Christopher Kane, one of the biggest names on the schedule, receives the fewest intern requests. Holly Fulton, on the other hand, could do with accepting some of the 70 or so work experience applications she has received over the past few months. Despite her rapid ascent, the young Scot only has two (unpaid) studio employees ‹ and that includes herself.

The smoky eye question polarised views, but all agreed that earthy colours would be big next winter. If you want to get ahead, bypass pastels and rediscover forest green, terracotta and black. The clothes may sound gloomy, however the surroundings are glorious. London Fashion Week¹s current home is Somerset House. A spectacular neo-classical mansion overlooking the Thames, whose Palladian lines form the backdrop to some of our designers¹ shows. Our designer panel aren¹t all taking advantage of the host space, of course.

This is London, where individuality reigns, and Richard Nicoll wants to see the Queen on his front row.

The designers:

Christopher Kane: Hot young thing chosen by Donatella Versace to revive the Versus line.

Matthew Williamson: Magician of Ibizan colour and celebrity-friendly shapes.

Julien Macdonald: Not dissimilar to Cavalli in tan colour and design aesthetic.

Pringle: Clare Waight Keller mixes minimalism with earthy, Scottish vistas.

Richard Nicoll: Part of the Saint Martins alumni, he carries greatness on his Aussie-raised shoulders.

Roksanda Ilincic: A striking Serbian known for her elegant silk cocktail dresses.

Daks: Filippo Scuffi is giving English tailoring a slick Italian gloss.

Peter Pilotto: Sounds like one person, actually a design duo who make sharp prints on tailored perfection.

Kinder: A new arrival at LFW but has created theatrical luxury for years.

Mark Fast: Knits scarily scant dresses but is happy to show them on curvier models.

Joanne Sykes: Her mainstay is cool, sleek, silk separates: clothes you¹d give a limb for.

Mary Katrantzou: Her visual prints put antique fragrance bottles on the fashion map.

Erdem: Exquisite colour and delicate texture for the lady who¹s in touch with her feminine side.

Holly Fulton: Dynamic, fresh, sharp, modern - a designer for girls who like the Chrysler building.

Heikki Salonen: The Swede is showing his simple, pared-down styles under the Fashion East umbrella.

Louise Gray: A designer with a fantastic sense of fun who specialises in embroidery.

Where will you be showing for LFW?

"Portico Rooms, Somerset House." Louise Gray
"Flower Cellars, Covent Garden." Richard Nicoll
"Selfridges' car park!" Peter Pilotto

What is the hot shoe for winter?