COS's virtue of offering high-end clothing at relativley affordable prices is likely to prove popular when it opens its first store in Scotland

WHEN it comes to fashion, sometimes it feels like we've got two choices: pile-it-high, sell-it-cheap and wear-it-once stuff that we find on the high street, or beautifully-designed high-end and high-quality pieces with price points to match. Sure, there's a middle market on the Great British High Street, but it's often rather lacking in chic design, aimed as it is at women who want to achieve either the sexy secretary (Reiss, Hobbs) or yummy mummy (Jigsaw) aestheti

Where are the beautiful, wearable design-led pieces for grown-ups who don't want their tops cropped, but aren't yet ready for pleated skirts with elasticated waistbands? Step forward COS (which stands for Collection of Style) the fashion world's best-kept secret, which set up shop in London in 2007 but has just opened its first store north of the Border, in Glasgow's Princes Square. Owned by H&M, their prices come in at around double that of the parent company, at the upper-end of the high street but still relatively affordable.

What makes this high street store different from all the rest? For starters, in addition to offering womenswear up to a size 18, the design team start on a size 12 model in the studio then work up and down from there, rather than working on a size eight and just sizing up. This means that their clever cuts work well on women of most sizes. Their designs are minimal and seasonless and opt out of the overly-literal take on trends that many high street chains favour (nautical is in? Well load up that T-shirt with stripes and anchors.)

"It's about high-quality clothes at a good price point, and I think that COS sits nicely between high street and high fashion," says Rebekka Bay, COS's creative director and head of women's design. "COS is for all ages. It was important for us not to impose an age bracket, but rather an aesthetic. And we often see mothers, daughters and granddaughters all dressing from COS. From the beginning we were just looking inside ourselves and asking what we really wanted, what we couldn't live without."

What they can't live without turns out to include androgynous white shirts with quirky tailored details, smart jackets in neutral shades with clean lines, and cleverly-draped dresses in on-trend shades of putty, grey and mushroom. They take their inspiration from French modernists from the 1930s, Danish designers from the 1950s, Helmut Lang's 1990s minimalism, sportswear and masculine fashions for womenswear.

Their menswear line is just as strong, and features, like the women's counterpart, classic minimal Scandinavian design with quirky twists. The androgynous aesthetic means that there is, refreshingly, far less distinction between menswear and womenswear than in your average high street store. Bay cites her favourite piece for spring as a longer-length white women's shirt (pictured) which might almost be worn by a man.

This is the kind of store from which you could source your entire wardrobe. It's the kind of store where hard-up fashion journalists (who write about couture but can only afford high street) snap up key pieces that everyone thinks are from Calvin Klein or Jil Sander. It's the kind of store where people of any age can shop without feeling over the hill because they can't squeeze into some neon skirt which they're not sure is indeed a skirt and not a hat or a belt.

It doesn't try to carpet bomb shoppers with trends or tick three boxes on one garment (lycra and tassels and buttons, oh my!) And all that style at high-street prices? Let's hope COS have reinforced glass in the doors of their Glasgow store because something tells me that Scottish women will be battering them down.