Backstage after the Prada show, someone asked Miuccia Prada if the four loose black dresses with which it began were a comment on fashion’s obsession with the Little Black Dress.

The designer laughed. “No. We are in a very black moment. This is a very difficult time. It is not my job to be political but, every time you open a newspaper – oh my god! My job is to think about what clothes a woman can wear. About what kind of femininity makes sense in a moment like this.”

Skirt suits, dresses and coats were generously cut, allowing the body within to move freely. “When we think of feminine beauty in clothes, our minds go straight away to something constricted,” said Prada’s co-designer, Raf Simons.

“I look around now and see so many corsets. I see women with so much work. Our idea of feminine beauty is often about constricting movement, so we wanted these clothes to be about liberation. Which is about fashion, but it is not just about fashion.”

To emphasise the message of liberation, the roomy cut was in contrast to styles that spoke to the ladylike 1950s and 1960s. There were Audrey Hepburn collars and rows of pearl buttons, trapeze line silhouettes and chain handle bags. Sweaters were pinned with jewelled brooches, coats swagged with (fake) fur collars.

Unusually, there were no evening dresses in the show. “This is not a time for decadence”, said Miuccia Prada. Instead, there were gestures of glamour – jewels, bows, high heels – on woollen dresses and cotton shirts. “Glamour is not a sexy dress, it’s an interior point of view. Glamour is about feeling important.”

Max Mara presented a more down to earth vision, with a show that gave a clear picture of what contemporary chic looks like. Coats are getting longer, so that ankle-length now looks more modern than knee-length. Tastefully oversized trousers belted at the waist have taken over from pencil skirts as the smart daytime uniform. Sleeveless layers, in the form of chunky gilets and knitted tank vests, are increasingly part of the fashion vernacular.

Ian Griffiths, the British creative director of Max Mara, starts with what real women wear and builds fashion out from there, rather than the other way around. This season, he wanted to do big skirts.

“So I thought: what story do I attach to this, to give it drama? We all have our dramas going on inside, so our clothes should, too.” A weekend in Yorkshire led him to the Brontë heroines Catherine Earnshaw and Jane Eyre, and a collection of rustling greatcoats, hardy layers with bellow pockets, chunky boots, stiff tweeds and grand velvets.

There was nothing Victorian about the clothes on the catwalk. “I’m not doing costume drama,” Griffiths said backstage. On his moodboard, an image of a woman looking out of a plane window was pinned next to a portrait of the Brontë sisters, “because I never forget that the woman I’m designing for is more likely to be getting on a plane to New York or marching through the corridors of power than marching across the moors. She’s probably a corporate lawyer.”