Strike gold

It's a colour that brings instant sunshine - and looks great with a bit of vintage. Team it with pale make-up, for a spot-lit look, and you'll see how gold can be white hot.

old is never a low-key colour. Instant sunshine, it has immediate power and ancient allure - but it's dangerous for the grey-haired and disastrous for the portly, according to Hardy Amies, who dismissed gold as yellow with a brownish tinge. When Kate Moss recently wore a shimmering sequin mini with plunging backline, however, it stimulated a rush for gold and a rash of copies.

If you're discreet, wearing lustrous fabrics can be modern and contemporary, part of the vogue for metallics where threads of silver, bronze or other shiny metals enliven yarns and impart reflective glints to classic shapes. Chanel's summery gold-threaded tweed jacket with burnished buttons is a good example. Gold shoes have always added a Midas touch, an extra sparkle to a summer or holiday outfit.

These dresses are not of the maximum-impact night-time variety; instead, they are more controlled ideas for summer dressing, taken from current and early-autumn chain-store collections and mixed with a bit of vintage. Wear them with pale, almost unearthly make-up for an updated spot-lit Hollywood coolness. Fabrics such as bronze brocade and patterned silk are shaded and textured rather than high shine lamé or sequined, but there's a sense of elegance nonetheless. With the frisson added by the reddened hair of Cerri, our model, Sarah Doyle's photographs show how modern gold can be white hot.

Doyle's latest project, incidentally, is a series of portraits of 12 well-known Irishwomen, including the singer Camille O'Sullivan, the politician Liz O'Donnell, the model Nikki Bonass and the actress and designer Antonia Campbell Hughes. The Max Factor-sponsored portraits, reflecting great moments in fashion, will be auctioned for charity in October.