Three Bad Mice: The Greatest Cape: A/W 13 Trend Alert

If there's one trend that single-handedly dominated the runways during fashion month it was the cape.

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It started at the Couture shows in Paris - capes, capes, everywhere! From wispy, etheral evening capes at Elie Saab to structured, sculptural capes at Giambattista Valli with a light dusting of dramatic, fairytale capes at Ulyana Sergeenko.

Elie Saab

Giambattista Valli

Ulyana Sergeenko

Cape mania continued apace at the New York Ready to Wear shows, where designers including Oscar de la Renta, Derek Lam and Donna Karan dispatched a band of caped-up models down their catwalks.

Oscar de la Renta

Derek Lam

Donna Karan

King of the cape in London was Marios Schwabb whose ankle grazing beauties had us wishing for autumn.

Marios Schwabb

Over in Milan superhero style popped up yet again with luxe velvet and fur capes at Pucci and checks at Blumarine.

Emilio Pucci

Blumarine

Last but not least, Paris also ran with the trend adding a dash of the swish-factor to the Chloe and Valentino catwalks.

Valentino

There's no doubt, that come September the high street will be cape central. Middle Mouse, always one to sense a trend before it drops, snapped up a gorgeous Just Cavalli Cape in the January sales which she's been rocking ever since with a delicious pair of elbow length wool and leather McQ Alexander McQueen gloves (another tick for the Middle Mouse fashdar - long gloves adorned arms all over the a/w catwalks).

If you don't possess Middle Mouse levels of fashion foresight but want to get in on the cape trend now, we have a solution which should tide you over until Autumn that doesn't even involve any new purchases... shoulder robing! Take one coat or jacket, sling casually over your shoulders (no arms in armholes) et voila, a capey-silhouette! Even if this wasn't the perfect way to lift a trend straight from the runway, could there be a better solution to trans-seasonal wardrobe quandaries?!

For further illustration of how it's done, see sports-luxe shoulder robing at Lanvin and polished winter-white robing at Hermes.

Lanvin