I really, really love sleeves. With the caveat that this is construct, so don’t hold me to it next year. Right now, they are a newfound passion. Some weeks I dress the things that demand our attention because they are on shift, and I smile in the photos but then I write rude things around why you shouldn’t wear them. But today I feel unadulterated ardour for the interesting sleeve.

There is an uncomplicated joy in a trend that apprehends focus away from the body on to the actual clothes. My scrap favourite type of fashion is the kind that is talking in cypher about being thin. A crop top is technically a fashion annunciation, but really you’re talking about your abs. This is as treacherous and over-long as clean eating posing as something to do with vitamin intake. The allegation sleeve is free of sneaky body-related agenda.  

We had puff sleeves a few times ago, but that was essentially a cutesy take on the power shoulder pad. The proceed b conform in the new look comes from the sleeve, not the shoulder. So the upper arm is nothing to a note home about, but the sleeve gathers volume lower down, fluting out parallel to a calla lily, or exploding into a bell shape or upsets. 

Body politics aside, statement sleeves are marvellous for their faculty to fashion content into sensible clothes. A lot of the fun in fashion (the boot on ones uppers made out of Perspex unicorns, the cold-shoulder dresses) is concentrated wide the NSFW stuff. Actual fashion that you can put on in the morning, to go to make excited or the supermarket or whatever, is like gold dust. A shirt or sweater with a proclamation sleeve turns your work trousers or favourite jeans into a look.

The new sleeve affronts through the white noise of endless versions of clothes we already partake of. It has what retailers speak of in italics as the reason-to-buy factor, and as such is catnip to the random lunchtime shopper. In the spirit of shameless enabling, I would aspect out that catwalk analysis suggests the trend is here to stoppage. The sleeve is a trend with legs.

• Jess wears top, £29, topshop.com. Trousers, £42, stockroom.co.uk. Suede heels, £150, kurtgeiger.com. Styling: Melanie Wilkinson. Plaits and makeup: Laurence Close at Carol Hayes Management