Caution may make sound commercial sense, but it rarely ensures arresting fashion. This is why, to outsiders, so much of what is shown during London Fashion Week must appear bizarre, if not absurd.
Occasions such as these few days are creative crucibles in which new ideas and talents are tested and while more often than not they are found to be flawed, a handful emerge as worthy of notice.
Without the element of risk, there can be no purpose to fashion weeks or shows; the gamble is what gives the whole event its raison d'etre. Yesterday Irish designer Paul Costelloe showed his new collection for next autumn/winter, a collection in which good sense of the commercial kind tended to overwhelm any impulse towards exuberant creativity.
This was the designer's "Costelloe" label, introduced last year as a younger, more inexpensive range.
The youthful characteristics were certainly kept in abeyance here, with the feeling instead of a mature spirit reluctant to take any chances. While beautifully made and eminently wearable, the clothes consistently lacked an air of adventure, instead looking as though their function was to offer a synopsis of contemporary good taste.
Were Paul Costelloe a rasher man, he might not have settled for simple tweed skirts and jackets, for mohair cardigan coats or lace shirts.
Common sense could be seen in abundance; it was the sense of the distinctively unusual which failed to be discovered. Of course, unusual is by no means synonymous with successful, as another of yesterday's shows proved. Four New Zealand designers came together - and halfway around the world - to stage a group presentation of their work this season in London.
The results are best described as mixed, with rather too much emphasis being placed on ensuring each of the four was noticed.
This meant that the decidedly mundane knitwear of Nom.D was put on the models back-to-front or inside-out, while the World label clothes were given futuristic style flourishes of a kind not normally seen outside episodes of Star Trek.
Karen Walker is a New Zealander whose clothes are starting to be stocked in Europe; she appeared as much taken with the vogue for Victorian skirts and blouses as many other designers in this part of the world. Of the four, Zambesi is indisputably the best, using buttermilk canvas cotton for trousers and shirts with unfinished hems, heavy felted wool for sleeveless coats and black quilted satin for waistcoats and jackets.
Risks were taken, sometimes unwisely, but even when the results were unsatisfactory they still conveyed that touch of excitement which is so necessary in fashion.