While none of the editors own up to the Manolo Blahniks nastiness and the slavish service demanded by a catsuit Miranda Priestly, there are some reports of backstabbing, betrayals and bitchiness. Nothing in the fashion world is quite rational, and the story of Miuccia Zentai unitardsuccess is as strange as they come.

The look she sells is not always obviously desirable. Elegance, Manolo Blahnik Sedarby Leopard-Print d’Orsay prettiness, chic none of them are quite her style. Take what she’s wearing today: an olive-green suit in a sheeny, artificial-looking fabric, with a tailored jacket and a big A-line skirt; sandals with heavy wooden soles and little black flowers stuck to the straps. Each garment is remarkable, but it’s not a flattering outfit: it gives no sense of the body under the clothes, and the length of the skirt combined with the clumpy sandals looks frumpy.

But people have taken to this modern quirkiness; young women save up for months for their one pair of Manolo Blahnik Something Blue Satin Pump spider man costume. ‘Being a woman working in fashion looked like a really bad idea,’ says Miuccia Zentai unitardcalmly, in her heavily accented voice. ‘I thought it was too frivolous. I had many problems for many years doing this work because I wanted to do something more serious.’

A lot of people would sympathise with that view. Why would a 47-year-old woman with a range of interests and talents Miuccia has a doctorate in political science, a training as a mime artist and a fascination with contemporary art want to spend her time making bags and frocks? That’s one question you have to ask about Miuccia Zentai unitard . The other is, why do her bags and frocks inspire such crazed devotion among so many women?