ALEXANDRA SHULMAN’S NOTEBOOK: It’s not the 80s – we don’t need shoulder pads to look sharp

On our BA flight back home from holiday last week, the crew were wearing the airline’s new Ozwald Boateng uniforms – a low-hipped, narrow cut, sassy pants suit and an equally slimline skirt with a jaunty tie.

I asked one about the design as she passed with the trolley, and she said it was her first time wearing it but that she much preferred the old one.

Certainly I would have thought that some of the slightly more portly members of BA’s flight teams will find the new look rather less than forgiving.

However, although I never thought I would say this, in their slimline, business-like rigour, the BA uniforms are on trend.

After years of shrouding ourselves in flowing, high-waisted midi dresses or cosy athleisure pants and sweaters, sharp tailoring is everywhere.

The Princess of Wales has swapped the long shirt dresses she made her staple for a wardrobe of trouser suits, while those stentorian Tory women (Kemi Badenoch, Suella Braverman and Penny Mordaunt) commanded not only centre stage of the Tory conference but outsmarted their male counterparts’ suiting. Even Rishi Sunak’s wife, Akshata Murty, appeared in a coral pants suit when she paid gentle tribute to her husband in a warm-up act.

On our BA flight back home from holiday last week, the crew were wearing the airline’s new Ozwald Boateng uniforms

Even Rishi Sunak ‘s wife, Akshata Murty, appeared in a coral pants suit when she paid gentle tribute to her husband in a warm-up act

Fashion writers call suits ‘power dressing’, as if wearing a fitted jacket and matching lower half suddenly endows the wearer with authority and control. Of course it’s nothing of the sort. And there’s something a touch dispiriting about this return to women dressing in suits in order to appear serious.

While nobody was more bored than I with the floral midis that have dominated women’s wardrobes for several years, the return to the two-piece suit seems retro-gressive.

The last time they were in fashion was during the 1980s, curiously propelled by the wives of American tycoons such as Ivana Trump, with the style trickling down to standard office-wear for any aspiring young woman. And, of course, there was Margaret Thatcher.

We all crammed ourselves into jackets and shoulder pads and tight skirts to clamber up the career ladder.

I’d like to think those days are over and that women can now dress as freely as they wish.

If they want to wear suits, that’s fine, but they shouldn’t be regarded as more professional than any other mode of dress.

The Chanel exhibition at the V&A Museum has a massive display of the suits for which the fashion house became famous, and it demonstrates how beautiful they can be. But they bear no resemblance to the standard, single colour, unadorned two-piece of unimaginative businesswear.

Let’s hope that this phase passes and the only people still wearing them every day are the BA crew.

Banning smoking won’t stub it out

As a smoker of more than 50 years, and not particularly proud of it, I theoretically applaud Rishi Sunak’s moves to outlaw the habit.

I began smoking at 13, battling through packets of St Moritz that made me feel sick until it became a pleasure.

Which, crazy as it seems, it has been ever since. I don’t crave the nicotine, but I am addicted to the habit. Of course it would be so much easier never to start.

Banning young people from being able to buy anything doesn’t work and Sunak’s softly-softly approach won’t either (Stock image) 

However, unless I’m missing something, banning young people from being able to buy anything doesn’t work and Sunak’s softly-softly approach won’t either.

When my son was a teenager the house was filled with the cigarette stubs of his 16-year-old friends and, indeed, the beer cans and empty bottles of vodka that they were also not meant to have been able to buy.

Cigarettes are available online, and putting our young people’s health in the hands of the authority of the late-night corner shop strikes me as an unlikely solution.

Canny Becks let his feet do the talking

Having binged on the four-part Beckham documentary, I am more admiring than ever of how Victoria and David have evolved over the years.

When I first met Victoria, in 2008, for her debut Vogue cover, she was shrewd, smart and very funny about undergoing the mortifying experience of appearing in a Spice Girls revival in a polystyrene catsuit and perma-tan.

David, scrolling through his phone in the dressing room pre-show, had excellent manners but kept completely silent.

Having binged on the four-part Beckham documentary, I am more admiring than ever of how Victoria and David have evolved over the years

Watching the witty, ruthless, ambitious and articulate David Beckham of the Netflix documentary makes me wonder if he was ever the beautiful, golden-booted but gormless and tongue-tied boy he appeared for years.

No one changes their personality that much. He was probably just canny enough to realise that if you had his looks and talent as a young footballer it was the shrewdest move to let them do the talking and to keep your mouth shut.

Sheer bliss comes with a few snags

If there’s one message I have taken away from the past month of fashion shows it’s that sheer black tights are what we – or those of us that care about such things – should be wearing this winter. Forget silhouettes and hemlines, it’s the little tweaks that make the difference.

This is tricky, though. As gorgeous as Kate Moss and Carla Bruni looked front row at the YSL show, their slim legs encased in 15 denier, and as stunning as Charlotte Gainsbourg’s appearance was in the sheerest of black sheers on the red carpet at the Elysee Palace, no one can deny that sheer tights are a great deal more trouble than those comforting, thick, black opaques we’ve hidden in for years.

They are certainly more attractive but, oh, the nightmare of trying to get them on without snagging them.

Don’t keep wondering why the male pill hasn’t yet been invented. How come no one has invented a ladder-free tight?

Our dirty laundry is getting its last airing

Some people will have been getting their barbecues fired up this weekend for a last blast of summer. Instead, I’ll be getting my kicks from hanging up our washing outside for what will probably be the last time this year.

Little makes me more content than seeing the laundry on the line and drying with the scent of the nearby fig tree permeating it, rather than in the stuffy tumble dryer where it will be confined for the next six months.

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