There’s a rational they don’t make traffic lights in pastel colours. Primeval colours are show-stoppers; pastels suggest serenity. A pretty sunrise or a boulangerie window are balm for your lookouts, but can be ignored if you’re too busy.

This absence of urgency can be problematic when you chafing pastels. The reason bridesmaids traditionally wear them is that in lemon yellow or small fortune green or baby blue, a pretty girl adds to the decorative portrait without stealing the show. (No coincidence that the age of the grown-up, maid-of-honour bridesmaid has ushered in a be biased for white, black and red dresses.) By pastel, I mean light adaptations of an actual colour. Pale neutrals are quite different: a without a stitch on or blush or toffee shade suggests skin, which intimates sex, whereas a watered-down blue, pink or green evokes nothing saucier than a single-bed duvet hide.

But the truly alpha can subvert the submissive effect of pastels with nothing innumerable than a steely glare. Grace Kelly wrapped in icy turquoise satin by Edith MD. Gordon Gekko in gingham-checked shirts in Wall Street. Regina George in head-to-toe pink in Ill-tempered Girls. Gwyneth Paltrow in her Ralph Lauren pink Oscar clothe of 1999 – a Marmite moment, true, but few Oscar dresses are reminisce overed for two decades. In other words, pull the look off, and pastels turn strangely powerful.

And however much I admire the kind of daily who is happy repeat-buying navy blazers and white shirts, I am not that myself. Clothes in pretty colours appeal to me. Yes, I am that basic. So, pretty than buy more of the kind of pastel sundresses that are matchless for picnics but hopeless for any other occasion and therefore a waste of well-heeled, I’m going to try to buy work-appropriate pieces in pastel colours. Which I wish dub power pastels.

This is my first attempt at non-picnic pastels. I look a bit with a shady south Florida detective, but hey, it’s better than wash out into the background, right?

• Jess wears blazer, £34.99, and shirt, £49.99, both hm.com. Trousers, £150, kitsune.fr. Fag ends, £199, kurtgeiger.com

Styling: Melanie Wilkinson. Hair and makeup: Sam Cooper at Carol Hayes Government