Not only the credit crunch but the all time low exchange rate has made living in France a great deal more expensive and most of us are looking at our diminishing dollars and pounds and wondering how to make them go further.

Born in Belgium, Brussels based Cathy Pill completed her studies at l’E.N.S.A.V. de La Cambre and has worked for A.F. Vandervors and Vivienne Westwood.

After winning a slew of awards, including in 2003 the Collection of the Year contest It’s-Two in Trieste, in 2005 two awards of the Foundation Pierre Bergé and Yves Saint-Laurent and the fashion house Yves Saint – Laurent Andam contests in France, the price in Italy Fabio Inghirami and the Prix Modo Bruxellae Belgium, Cathy Pill launched her first collection of ready-to-wear during the Fashion Week in Paris in October 2005.

Now aged 27, recently married and with her first baby on the way, Cathy already has everything lined up for spring. She gets a jump on the season by showing her ready-to-wear ahead of her peers during Paris Couture week and what she’s up to is getting better by the season.

She belongs (in spirit, if not geographically) to the cohort of young modernist print talents that has been on the rise in Europe, like Josh Goot and Peter Pilotto.

Pill also has a mathematical brain that approaches the draping of a dress like a geometry problem. She aims to have dresses that are as easy as T-shirts to put on and says  “I’ve gone through everything, thinking what I want to wear.”

Collections Cathy Pill is distinguished by the clever use of printed fabrics and shapes, to create modern feminine silhouettes.

Video: Fédération Française de la Couture

If you ever need an excuse to get out of D.I.Y. chores, print this out and leave it lying on the kitchen table…

One day, my friend Steve Cooper was drilling a hole in his living room so he could finally hang a picture that he’d bought about six months previously.

He made a note of the positions of all the sockets and light fittings, picked a spot away from all the wires, and got drilling.

Next thing he knew, there was an explosion of bright blue light, and he was thrown clear across the room. It turns out the electrics in his apartment were a right mess, with wires running all over the place.

Luckily, it propelled him away from the current, and his only injuries were minor burns to his hands.

But he swears something else happened to him that, at the time, seemed most unlikely…