There I was on Net-a-Porter, minding my own business (fantasy window-shopping for outrageously expensive dresses), when a whole load of very glam-looking clothes popped up with prices that were so unusually low, I thought that there had been a mistake. Dresses for £50! You can’t buy a pair of socks on Net-a-Porter for fifty quid! It turns out that it was the new Altuzarra for Target collection that has launched in the states (at Target, obviously) but that has also been picked up by Net-a-Porter. And so I thought that it would be rude not to at least try some of the collection, and promptly added two dresses and a faux-fur jacket to my shopping basket.

A few gripes: a $49.99 dress costs £50 on Net-a-Porter. Now I’m not an exchange rate expert but I’m pretty sure that the sterling price should be lower, so… Also, this is not designer-quality merchandise we’re talking about here – the coat has something of an..er..electrical quality to it and the python print dress that I chose is a bit flimsy. I think that Topshop is probably better quality, though the faux-fur jacket has the most wonderful wide shoulders and film-star kind of cut. I’m going to sit on the faux-fur for a few days and decide whether to keep it. (Not literally sit on it, you understand, it’s a figure of speech.)

One thing that I love, however, is the rather bizarre “half work shirt, half siren python-skin skirt” hybrid dress (find it here). Something about it is so very wrong, but when I put it on it was just so very, very right. Flattering, cut exactly to my waist and hips so that it seemed very tailored and, though the fabrics aren’t the kind of thing you’d find in a high-end store, it looked good, I thought. It’s a keeper. There’s something about it that’s very Sexy Secretary, a bit Clark Kent if he was a woman. (On the top half, she was a straight-laced newspaper clerk, on the bottom half, she was SEX WOMAN!)

You can find the Altuzarra for Target range at Net-a-Porter here – let me know if you snap anything up. I wanted a belt, but they sold out almost the minute they landed online.

(For your reference: I bought the dress in the photos in a size 4 – it’s snug, but it fits well. I am a definite UK 10, not a UK 8. The fur comes up small – I bought size small and it only just closes. The snakeskin dress here is too small for me, I needed a US6 but bought a US4.)