How easy ladylike dressing seems: Throw on dress, attempt to fix your hair into shampoo advert worthy waves, always hang a handbag from one arm and never, ever even contemplate swapping your heels for flats. Though put a dainty foot wrong and you've strayed too far into the territory of footballers wives or found yourself on an English country estate using "mummy" without flinching. But Fendi, the Italian label known for unabashed extravagance, knows how to get it right.

With its neat peter pan collar and puffed sleeves this dress exaggerates all the stereotypes about prim and propper dressing. Fendi's dress, with its button down front and latticed sleeves in cream, looks as if it should appear on a little china doll. Miu Miu toys with this too with gingham earrings seemingly inspired by a cottage kitchen's table cloth.

These playful pieces have a hint of 50s housewife and a pinch of Mad Men, but the shapes and proportions make todays girl a very modern lady.

When Louis Vuitton decks out models sitting on the white horses of a giant carousel in candy coloured appliqued dresses, you bet we sit up and take notice.

The girly, sticky sweetness appeals to those who grew up playing in a land of make believe with dolls, Care Bears or reading fairytales and watching Disney. Jacobs played with fashions fantastical nature that's a far cry from the season before that saw oil spill leathers and fetishised boots stomp down the runway.

The peach outfit with broderie anglaise top and skirt veiled in organza look like the fragile packaging of a boutique in Paris selling macaroons and other delicacies. Here, Vuitton is paired with Manolo Blahnik shoes in pastle yellow and dove grey and with another fashion house no stranger to designing for a younger, girlie woman, Miu Miu.

With Louis Vuitton, we're like kids in the fashion sweet shop this spring.

Whether she finds herself in the Sahara, trekking in far eastern mountains or on old Aztec trails, the Hermès woman has always been a luxurious nomad. Travel Hermès-style doesn't include backpacks and cargo pants or entertain the notion of being jammed in economy. Oh no. The label under the watch of Christophe Lemaire's minimalist, orientalist aesthetic is the go-to for the ultimate in French glamour and globe-trotter chic.

For his SS12 collection Lemaire started in Greece with skirts and headscarves, the kind of brilliant white that's given off by the glare of painted houses in the Mediterranean sun. Next came the burnt orange pieces, the olive tones and buttery leather dresses and a jacket before the prints arrived.

It's the bold print silk number that stands under the hot sun here, with illustrated characters that on first glance look like tribal patterns. These little figures are wearing feather headdresses, armour and tunics, printed in earthy colours that jump out against the stark white. The equestrian roots of the house appear too with leather orange straps at the waist and around the wrist. Such a statement dress need only be teamed with black Cutler and Gross glasses to shield from the sun's rays.

Whether far off lands are beckoning or it's just a little Parisian cafe in the afternoon, slipping into Hermès is just the ticket this summer.