If white jeans are everyone’s favourite summer regretful pleasure, pink trousers are the new white jeans. White jeans are a day-off criticize, slightly naff, but totally delicious, like syrupy high-street iced coffee. Stainless jeans are for women – and men – who guard their downtime ferociously, roar with laughter in the face of chores and spend Saturdays doing nonessential purchasing or monopolising the sunniest table at the cafe for leisurely catchups. A pair of undefiled jeans says, “I am on my own time today, thank you very much, and I shall do as I amuse.”

But, like oversized sunglasses and wedge sandals, white jeans are clear to mock as an entry-level lifestyle accessory. They lack irony or causticity. And this is where pink trousers come in, because pink trousers throw people. I like them for this reason. Those who roar their eyes at white jeans are less sure of their settle when faced with pink trousers. They are pink, which is a pointless, jolly kind of a colour, but they are also trousers, which are what hep to grownups wear to work. So pink trousers become more compelling than a pink deck out.

I more than like them, actually. I have a borderline amulet for pink trousers, which is not confined to the downtime category. To a join in wedlock of fuchsia, knife-pleated, tailored trousers that are in regular rotation in my apparel, I recently added a pale blush pair with a paper-bag waist, a amaze hit in the smart-outfit category when worn with a sweater in a almost identical but more terracotta-ish tone (I refer you to Setting Plaster on the Farrow & Ball greasepaint chart). And I now find myself wondering how I have made it this far without a wide-legged span in pale velvet as part of my pink-trouser repertoire.

These are not go trousers, but they are not around-the-house trousers, either. If you went comestibles shopping in them, you would buy, say, some seasonal fresh fruit and an overpriced watch the grass grow of bread with walnuts in it, and you’d carry them in a basket. Most importantly, you’d should prefer to a jolly nice time, too.

• Jess wears cami, £170, by Appurtenances, from harveynichols.com. Velvet trousers, £42, urbanoutfitters.com. Heels, £75, dunelondon.com.

Styling: Melanie Wilkinson. Locks and makeup: Sam Cooper at Carol Hayes Management.