Much as I love fashion, there are times when you have to ignore 90 per cent of it and cut to the sartorial chase. To prove my point, I give you the skirt suit. Skirt suits have nothing whatsoever to do with fashion at the minute, which is having a major Seventies moment and coming over all Stevie Nicks and Annie Hall. Fashion, to make it absolutely clear, is all about the soft, floaty dress this season. Oh, and flares. That's fine and dandy for those days when it's appropriate to channel lovable, kooky flakes. Back on Planet Earth, however, when you need to feel authoritative and feminine, when you want people to take you seriously (but are also benevolently disposed to them noticing your toned legs and trim waist) or when you have a smart wedding or Summer Event looming, nothing works quite like a skirt suit. Cast your mind back to Angelina Jolie, method-acting "British" when she met the Queen at Buckingham Palace last year in her dove grey Ralph & Russo skirt suit. Or Stella McCartney collecting her OBE from Buckingham Palace in 2013 in a midnight-blue silk skirt suit of her own design. Clearly there's nothing like a date at Buck House to clarify the mind when it comes to skirt suit issues. Come to think of it, Sophie Wessex is quite nifty with a skirt suit herself. It works on any age: art director and model Julia Restoin Roitfeld, Amal Clooney and Naomie Harris in their thirties. Queen Letizia in her forties. Rihanna in her twenties. And then there's Meryl Streep, looking epically elegant in Lanvin at the Oscars back in February and making all the other actresses in their flimsy, damp wisps look like flibbertigibbets. Let Hillary Clinton own "pant-suits". She came of age at a moment when the most expedient route for an ambitious woman in politics involved co-opting a man's look, and it's my guess she also has hang-ups about her legs, having been endlessly lampooned for them in the past. long chiffon bridesmaid dresses Skirt suits do something that a trouser suit, for all the latter's many virtues, can't - and that's simultaneously play up a woman's femininity and her power without any compromise, apology or vague attempts at "irony". They are, in every sense, all woman. It's no coincidence that they went mass during the Second World War, when millions of women were discovering independence and meaning beyond the kitchen and parlour. I'm not saying there aren't drawbacks to a skirt suit. The nippy, feminine ones have to be extremely well‑cut. The skirt can't be too long, the jacket must end at the hips and no lower. You have to think hard about your footwear. You may have to have yet another conversation about tights. Sheer? Fishnet? (If you go this route, brown is less tarty than black.) Bare‑legged is risky, weather-wise. Angelina broke almost every rule. But she's Angelina. There's a reason for the rules. If you're tall, like Jolie, you can carry a long skirt, even one to the ankles, and wear it with a masculine blazer. Shorter women should avoid a skirt that's longer than mid-calf, and no one should go above the knee, or they'll be tugging it down their thighs every time they sit down, simply to avoid a Basic Instinct moment. Exhausting and not remotely authoritative. Just below the knee is about right. The jacket should cover half your bottom, not all of it. It's counter-intuitive, but a shorter jacket works better with a slim skirt and is more figure-flattering. What do you wear under the jacket? Not a bulky shirt or a bad vest, that's for sure, but something more akin to a silky or chiffon blouse. I won't lie: discipline, an eye for detail and a degree of bossy control are required for skirt suits. But the combination of curves and conviction is extremely potent. As the late Oscar de la Renta said: "Style begins by looking good naked. It's a discipline. And if you don't dress well every day, you lose the habit." In other words, suck it up. Alternatively, save your skirt suits for special occasions - a nuclear option at weddings, cocktail parties, Ascot and particularly demanding days at work. But make sure you have one. Americans, from Michelle Obama, Sarah Palin (second-rate mind, first-rate political wardrobe) and Nancy Pelosi, leader of the House of Representatives, to Sarah Jessica Parker and TV news anchor Diane Sawyer are very good at skirt suits - but then, they're often ahead of us on "career-wear". Perhaps they've intuited that, with Feminism very much back on the agenda, it's no bad thing to demonstrate the many different packages that can deliver power. I'm thinking now of a particular, nicely cut, perfectly judged scarlet skirt suit that none of us was supposed to notice, and yet no one could have failed to observe. Would Nicola Sturgeon have made quite such a favourable impression during the leaders' debate if she hadn't been wearing a skirt suit that semaphored competent confidence, while emphatically marking her out as not one of the boys? I wonder. When a friend in her early fifties told me she'd had an undercut, I knew we'd turned a corner. The undercut is the hair flourish of the moment. But it's not for the faint-hearted, involving razors and a finished effect that leaves a good proportion of your scalp exposed beneath a downy buzzcut. It's also not really meant to be for the over‑thirties. But then nor, supposedly, are nose piercings, ripped jeans, Moschino's Barbie collection, phone cases with bunny ears and pompoms. You could say the last three are not so much youthful as infantile. Yet they're proving mightily popular among the grown-ups. Perhaps many of us have decided that acting maturely all the time is a bit of a drag. Five years ago, youthfulness meant vacuum-packing yourself into a pair of skinny rock chick drainpipes, a bicep-baring singlet, and a regular date with the hair tongs - an average day in Madonna's wardrobe, in other words. http://www.kissybridesmaid.com/plus-size-bridesmaid-dresses Today's youth signifiers include faux-rebellious jewellery and Anya Hindmarch's cheery leather bag stickers (from £35, Anya Hindmarch). Fortunately, these anti-Establishment gestures require no lasting commitment. The nose piercings are fake (£8, Claires), the buzzcut grows back, and the bunny ears quickly discolour, so once you've come to your senses you can replace the phone case on hygiene grounds.
