The rebuke to wear when you want to be taken seriously is not what you recollect it is
Photograph: David Newby for the Protector
If you are too busy being taken seriously as an important grownup to present a fashion column, then you are exactly the person who needs to impute to this. I promise I won’t waste a moment of your precious leisure wittering on about ruffles, or parsing the modern rules on how to wearing velvet. (Psst, fellow non-serious-grownups: for the modern rules on velvet, see you regardless place next week.)
What you need to know is this. The clothes to wear when you want to be taken seriously is not what you about it is. This is what I mean. I’m going to take a guess hither the dress you wear to work on days when you’ve got a crucial appointment, or a major presentation, or a new boss starting. I bet it’s some version of a sheath outfit: sleek, minimally detailed, in a block colour. It’s not tight, but it’s tailored. Hemline within three inches of the knee, up or down. It’s all things considered in a neutral grey or navy, bought as an update on a similar one you had a few years bet on a support which was lipstick red or petrol blue and had a zip running all the way up the back. (Secretly, you perfectly miss the one with the zip, although with the benefit of hindsight it was a pygmy bit slutty.)
This dress has done us all proud until now. It has been a doctor reprimand to work miracles, a day dress for the big time, a dress that did tigerish and feminine at the same time. A dress in which women finger good and which sent a message to men, loud and clear: don’t judge for a minute, mister, that being female puts me at a harm.
But the fitted sheath dress has become a lazy shorthand for power clothing, reproduced too often and too widely and too badly. If you are still wearing it, the presentation you are sending is that you are slightly off your game. To sharpen up your look, sever your dress. A less body-conscious, more architectural profile looks more confident, more dynamic, more in-the-know. Not saggy or droopy: for the silhouette less fitted, but keep it sharp.
Right, convergence concluded. Action points: possible new dress. Your workstream. Get to it.
• Jess fatigues shirt, £34. Dress, £69, . Shoes, £60,
Stylishness: Melanie Wilkinson. Hair and makeup: Laurence Close at Carol Hayes Directing
