TRAPEZE, tulip and bell-shaped dresses have become so much a part of our spring fashion vocabulary and landscape that even the dreariest of stores are beginning to look shapely.

Take flailing high street entity Next, whose latest crop of in-store styles would put hip stores like All Saints into the shade.

Think volume tops and skinny leggings, big sunnies, slouch trousers, pencil skirts and platform heels - and all at prices that make Oasis look pricey.

This dress, pictured, is a steal at just Euro68.

Just as long as your mum doesn't spot it too.

MONSOON SEASON COULD there be a better brand ambassador for Monsoon than Liz Hurley?

Okay, when she tied the knot to Arun Nayar last weekend in Gloucestershire she wasn't wearing a Monsoon dress (she was in fact in Versace) - but as face of the brand, all this wedding hysteria surrounding her can't be doing any harm to its Euro300 wedding dresses.

The brand can rest assured that its summer collection of skimpy print bikinis, silk tunic one-pieces and kaftan dresses go wafting out that door after her.