Prada S/S 22

Prada’s bringing sexy back. So is Stella McCartney, Saint Laurent and Dior. Whether you’re ready to throw off your cosy Covid layers or not, the fashion industry closed ranks at fashion weeks last month and presented a united front: with hemlines high, silhouettes shaped and fabrics transparent, the message was unequivocal: snug is out, sexy is in. In an interview with The New York Times earlier this year, Rent the Runway founder Jenn Hyman summed up the new fashion mood when she explained: “If it was lounge-y enough, comfortable enough, boring enough, gray enough to wear in 2020, we’re not buying it for 2021.”

We may be heading for a roaring, 1920s-type Christmas, but from a style perspective, it’s going to look a lot more like the Swinging Sixties.

More’s the pity...I’d choose a flapper-style drop waist dress over a Mary Quant mini skirt any day of the week. While brands made a point of dressing models of varying ages and sizes in their body-skimming, thigh-high creations in an effort to resonate with the customers who can actually afford to buy these clothes, I can’t be the only woman in midlife who views this return of minis and bodycon as some sort of fresh, post-Covid form of torture. The sixties is simply not my style decade, and a mini skirt will not help me face my post-pandemic demons.

While Dior creative director Maria Grazia Chiuri – a 57-year-old mother of two – last month lauded mini skirts as an item any woman could wear, she herself, it was noted by fashion expert Jess Cartner-Morley in The Guardian, made her appearance on the catwalk at the end of the SS22 show in a black trouser suit. Mmm. I’ve often admired Victoria Beckham and Stella McCartney for always wearing their own creations. For a designer in midlife whose market is women in midlife, it’s the best way to show you believe in what you’re selling.

But really, wearing a mini skirt has nothing to do with age or size, and everything to do with attitude. Lizzo looks phenomenal in a short skirt because she has the ballsy personality to back it up. Similarly, when Tropical Popical owner Andrea Horan gets her legs out, she looks as relaxed as she does in a pair of tracksuit bottoms. If you follow the Instagram account AndBloom, you’ll see a montage of incredible women in their 60s, 70s and 80s, some of whom are dressed in mini skirts and are rocking them all the way.

It comes down to whether an item of clothing resonates with the essence of you, and nothing more.

For me, it’s a Mary Tyler Moore-style polo-neck, while anything Downton Abbey-esque is the stuff of my fashion dreams. I can even get back on board with the slip dress trend of the nineties, as long as I can hide all of that exposed flesh beneath an oversized blazer. I love to be covered, you see, from ankle to ear lobe, and while trends don’t have the influence over my wardrobe that they did 20 years ago, I’d still like to look fresh and relevant. But I know for certain that I will look neither in a thigh-skimming skirt.

I’d be pulling and tugging at it like a child scratches an itch, and I’d feel about as comfortable, so I’m not letting go of my midi skirts for love or fashion. Thankfully, trends are as open to interpretation as the truth is for Donald Trump. What I want is to embrace the spirit of fashion month – the freedom, the release, the celebration – without having to compromise my own personal style. So the Amish necklines and hemlines will stay, but the fabrics will evolve to include sheers, embellishments and sequins. TV presenter Claudia Winkleman encapsulated how I want to translate this new fashion moment when she wore an exquisite long, black, embellished dress from New York brand Retrofête on the opening show of the new series of Strictly Come Dancing. It was sexy, glamorous, demure, distinct and modern all at the same time.

What I liked most about this piece was the ease of movement it allowed. Slinky might be sexy, but a fluid silhouette is sensuous, and it epitomises the freedom of a post-lockdown Christmas for me. I won’t let go of my beloved chunky knits either, but I’ll style them with a sequined skirt instead, as seen at Victoria Beckham’s Resort show. This unexpected pairing of relaxed, homely woollens with the high-octane glamour of shiny sequins is the most modern of pairings, and it’s a great way to bring the spirit of the season into your day-to-day wardrobe.

After 18 months of confinement and casual clothes, I don’t only want to feel special when I’m ‘out out’.

I’m finally ready to reconnect, and I need clothes to help me do that. Fashion is another form of therapy, after all. During the pandemic we medicated with tactile hoodies and blanket-soft knits. Now, as we tentatively peek back inside our wardrobes with a fresh perspective and different requirements, we need a little coaching to help us figure out what to wear in a world that simply doesn’t look or feel the same as it did two years ago. While it’s easy to dismiss fashion weeks as irrelevant and unnecessary, costly and cliquish, it’s in times of crisis and uncertainty that they deliver the kind of tonic we could all do with a healthy dose of.

So I’m prescribing myself the pink sequin skirt that has hung forlornly in my wardrobe since 2019 (I’ve mentioned this skirt before in my fashion pieces because it seemed to symbolise so perfectly my life before the pandemic and I’ve always felt that if I was to take it out of my wardrobe again, it would signal the end of the debilitating Covid-19 cycle we’ve been stuck in). And as a post-pandemic, belated birthday, early Christmas gift to myself, I plan to commission the fabulous Karen Birney of Miss She’s Got Knits to create me something special, because this is the most important message we can take from last month’s fashion weeks – sexy may be back, but special is the new black.

Fashion Makes its Comeback

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