They're the most-regretted fashion purchase, according to a survey. That's because wearing them won't make you look thinner, no matter how much you might wish otherwise

There are lots of things I would like to do. I would love to learn to speak French properly, rather than sounding like a total div when I attempt it. I would love to give up my caffeine-addict regime of flat whites and vats of builders' brew and be one of those serene green-tea types. I would love to be the sort of woman who has a dry body brushing regime.

And I would also love to wear leather trousers.

However, I have the self-knowledge to realise that none of the above are actually going to happen in the foreseeable future. Learning French? Bearing in mind that I still haven't mastered my eight-times table, this degree of home study seems a stretch. Green tea? Can't stand the stuff. Dry body brushing? Does anyone actually do that?

The wearing of leather trousers is just as unlikely. Frankly, I can't see myself pulling it off. A new survey found they were the most regretted fashion purchase among women, possibly for the same reason I don't own a pair. Appealing as the idea of leather trousers is, the reality is that they won't actually look good on me.

Leather trousers look best on the young and skinny, and people who are young and skinny are drawn to them for this reason. The problem is, people who wish they were younger and skinnier are also drawn to them for this reason, and that's where the trouble starts.

The wearing of leather trousers can be the wardrobe equivalent of the sports car, for those of us of a certain age. Speaking as someone who is approaching a landmark birthday which, ahem, isn't 30, I can vouch for the siren lure of leather trousers. At Paris fashion week recently, I chased a fellow British fashion editor out of the Chanel show because she was wearing really great-looking leather trousers – not too tight or too baggy, a flattering central seam on the thigh – and I wanted to ask where she got them. (They were from Zara. God bless the Brits, wearing Zara to Chanel. Apparently they are about £200.)

Leather trousers are the equivalent of a slogan T-shirt saying "I've Still Got It". (See Gwyneth Paltrow. To be fair, she pulls it off – albeit in a slightly wan, macrobiotic way.)

The brutal truth is we are drawn to leather trousers at precisely the point pulling them off becomes almost impossible. We want what we can't have. It's human nature. Speaking of which, I'm off to Zara.

This season's headline floral is Vaguely Oriental – a restrained, slightly sombre beauty that's timeless, not retro

Flowers have a language all of their own. You already know this: giving someone a red rose, rather than a sunflowery, says something quite particular; and a daisy chain around your neck sends a very different message from a camellia on your lapel. The Victorians, never ones to let emotion and instinct rule when they could make everything overcomplicated and tortured instead, turned floriography into a complex secret code: a solid colour carnation meant yes, a striped one no. But the fundamentals of the language are deep-rooted and intuitive to most of us. Rosemary for remembrance, snowdrops for hope.

So there's no logic in thinking of flowers as a uniform category in fashion: in general, they simply stand for femininity, which doesn't narrow it down at all, because femininity is as broad a church as they come. Each type of floral says something different. But – and this is why designers love them – they set mood music, rather than spelling out their message. A bright, naive daisy motif can be sunny and uncomplicated or late-60s psychedelic, depending on how you use it. Spriggy, muted florals can be Little House On The Prairie or Bloomsbury Set, depending on how they're coloured and cut, and on the wearer's hairstyle. There is room for ambiguity and nuance of the kind you just can't achieve with a slogan T-shirt.

So I offer no apology for "defining" this season's headline floral as Vaguely Oriental. Designers are currently drawn to peonies and chrysanthemums, often on black backgrounds. Fashion in general has shifted from peppy, clean-lined minimalism to something darker and more gothic but still elegant. The Vaguely Oriental floral is in line with this. It is slightly unfamiliar, and a restrained, slightly sombre beauty; timeless, rather than retro.

There is another reason the Vaguely Oriental floral feels right for now. This picture was taken indoors, a while ago; by the time you read this, we will be firmly into black tights season, and a print with a black background is an easier fit with dark hosiery. The language of flowers and femininity may be complex, but this is a point we all understand.

• Jess wears dress, £865, by Jonathan Saunders, from matchesfashion.com. Shoes, £325, by Paul & Joe, 020-7824 8844.

Styling: Lucy Trott at Carol Hayes Management. Hair and makeup: Dani Richardson, using YSL.

We talk fashion and the 50s with Romola Garai, Dominic West and Ben Whishaw, the stars of the BBC's hit series, The Hour

One Thursday morning not long ago, I caught a bus to 1957. Alighting at Crouch End Broadway, I walked into the old Hornsey Town Hall and found myself in the office of a television news producer on whose desk was a Remington Rand typewriter, and next to it a stack of typewritten articles from the wires, clamped together with a hefty metal bulldog clip, the top of which was a report about the marriage of Prince Rainier to Grace Kelly. On the bookshelves, a 1957 explanatory tome about nuclear power rested next to a contemporary Who's Who. On a smaller, secretary's desk in the anteroom, a 1950s seaside postcard was secured under a glass paperweight.

The woman whose office this was strode along the corridor, dressed in an orange skirt suit with a teal blouse, her hair rollered, her face powdered and lipsticked. And then I walked through a doorway and the illusion was broken, for in the space of a yard I found myself transported from the 50s Beeb to a Soho nightclub, one where Martini bottles lined the bar and the velvet-swagged tables were sized for two cocktail glasses and a large ashtray.

This is the set of The Hour, which arrived on our TV screens last year billed as the British Mad Men, but turned out to be something quite different. Both shows deal with sexual politics in a world on the brink of seismic change. But in some ways The Hour, set among the makers of a radical new TV news show, has less in common with Don Draper and co than it does with Rona Jaffe's The Best Of Everything, a 1958 novel about the first generation of career women in New York, which Draper is at one point seen reading in bed. As in Jaffe's book, the changing role of women is at the very centre of The Hour, which revolves around the character of Bel Rowley, a young producer based on the real-life BBC producer Grace Wyndham Goldie. Because it takes as its viewpoint the making of a BBC programme about contemporary events, The Hour is very much about Britain: about the British establishment attempting to adapt to or control a world on the edge of dramatic change. The first series was set against the backdrop of the Suez crisis; the second, which reaches screens later this month, a year later in 1957.

Writer Abi Morgan is on set the day I visit, despite "the most horrific hangover ever". Morgan, whose other recent credits include The Iron Lady and Shame, is loud but tiny; the hangover comes with a long, funny story that involves being accidentally bought champagne by Danny DeVito. Finding the right backdrop for the new series, she tells me, is a process of "chasing down history to find the story. Thematically, there are two threads – the nuclear threat and the start of the cold war, and the internal threat caused by immigration and a new clash of culture. The late 1950s is the moment when Britain breaks free from the old establishment, and signs up to a new world order that is all about money. There's so much going on. It's a ticking clock. To me, that's what The Hour symbolises."

Fast forward a week, and Romola Garai– the wearer of the aforementioned orange skirt suit – strides into a Shoreditch photographic studio in an Isabel Marant cotton top ("Horribly, horribly expensive, but it is literally my favourite top ever") and high-waisted jeans, carrying a pack of cigarettes and a take-out coffee. It is the morning after the wrap party, and Garai and her co-stars, Dominic West and Ben Whishaw, are back in 2012. Today, they are to be shot in both 1950s and contemporary fashion. It is the modern clothes that Garai is more concerned about: she has what costume designers quaintly call "an old-fashioned figure", and that she refers to more colourfully as "plenty of junk in the trunk".

"What happened with The Hour," she tells me, "was basically that I picked up the script and the first line I read was, 'Bel is sitting at her desk.' And I was like, well, this is fucking amazing. This part is mine. Because how often are you ever introduced to a young female character and she's sitting behind an actual desk? The main thing I'm interested in is that I don't want the women I play to be defined by their romantic involvement with the male lead. I want them to have a job. So the fact that Bel having a job is the first thing we know about her was a huge deal for me."

Garai says she recognises a lot of Bel's character in herself. "We are similar in being ambitious, young women who love our jobs and are truly passionate about them. And who are interested in the world around them, and in politics. But we are different in that Bel is a real diplomat with people, which I'm not at all. I say what I think, and then get into trouble." She tries to look sheepish about this, but it's not particularly convincing. "Actually, I think it's OK to fight for what you care about. The best piece of advice I was given about work was by someone who told me that it's OK to have conflict. I think sometimes women need to be reminded of that."

"Hello, Romsey Poms!" With this greeting to Garai, Dominic West, who plays Hector in The Hour, bursts into the makeup room. He positions himself in front of the mirror, which is the largest in the studio, to check his reflection in the outfit he has been dressed in. (As the shoot progresses, West is often to be found in front of this mirror; Whishaw, on the other hand, tends to slope off to a bathroom to inspect his reflection without an audience.) Garai, who missed the wrap party, asks West how it was. "Marvellous! Just marvellous. There were dancing girls, Romsey Poms, and you know how I love dancing girls." Garai rolls her eyes at me in the makeup mirror, hugs West, and announces fondly that, "Dominic is an idiot, obviously, but actually we all get on incredibly well. Not just us three [with Whishaw], but everyone. There is a lot of corpsing on the set of The Hour. One day, we got so hysterical they had to clear the set and send us all back to our rooms. Anna [Chancellor] had tears streaming down her face, they had to redo her makeup. We got into so much trouble."

Later, Whishaw describes it as "amazing, just a lovely, lovely set. It seems odd to talk about the three of us because the others, like Anna [Chancellor] and Oona [Chaplin], are such a vivid part of it. There is just a huge, huge amount of love and honesty and laughter."

But while The Hour was lavished with praise for its 1950s style, Garai is notably less effusive when we discuss Bel's wardrobe. "The clothes are the one element of the programme that I feel rather ambivalent about. My choice would have been for her to be dressed in a more realistic way, which would be much tweedier. But needless to say the producers were keen for her to look as glamorous as possible. I feel strongly that how Bel dresses is not how someone in that environment would really have dressed. She wouldn't have wanted to look glamorous, to make herself vulnerable to criticism in that way. If it was down to me, it would've been tweed suits and brogues."

Many of the same tastes apply in real life, she says, despite today's ultrafashionable Marant. "I wear a lot of navy and grey, and I do love woolly tights. My sister says I dress like a French teacher. The level of grooming that was involved for women in the 1950s is completely alien to me. I don't wax. I barely shave. If I do my own makeup, I look like I've been to a burns unit."

The second series of The Hour sees Whishaw's character, Freddie, return older, wiser and better poised as a meaningful rival to Hector for the status of the show's alpha male. As interviewees, the two actors could scarcely be more different. Whishaw sits facing me, neatly cross-legged, hair falling over his eyes, elfin face resting on the points of long-fingered pianist's hands. When he answers a question, he closes his eyes and leans forward, to speak directly into my tape recorder. He talks very slowly, and after Garai's galloping gossip it takes me a few minutes to adjust, so I find myself asking the next question only to realise he is still pondering the last. When West's turn comes, he sprawls on the sofa with one arm thrown across the back, claiming maximum space like a tiger prowling the boundaries of his cage, angling what I suspect he knows is his best side towards me. It is a measure of his charm that he is, despite all this, impossible to dislike.

Whishaw, like Garai, was drawn to the character as written by Morgan. "Freddie is one of those characters you'd like to be more like, in real life. We're similar in that we're both a bit obsessive, but he's braver, bolder. He has absolute courage in his convictions. He's not a saint, but at the centre of him is something very admirable. I think it would be lovely to have that conviction, that very clear belief structure. I guess I wish I had that." Whishaw has a whimsical, meandering way of talking, and a tendency to start stories that don't go anywhere. (On clothes: "I once had a pair of jeans I really liked. I loved them, they were perfect! And then they fell apart and, um, well I didn't buy another pair.") His ideal day off, he says, would be wandering around the markets and flower markets in east London, where he lives. "I like to sort of drift about."

West swears a great deal, loudly and with immaculate enunciation, in the manner of Hugh Grant in Four Weddings. Eton educated, he shook off the posh actor label when he scored his role in The Wire; having done that, he is free to play posh again. "Hector is old-school. He was at D-day. But his ambition means that he has to try to leave that behind, to straddle the old establishment and the new." A bit like you then? He starts to laugh. "Well, I think we both enjoy a party. Wine, women and song, you know." He smiles at me, longing for the woman from the Guardian to get wound up, so I ignore him and ask about something else, at which point he cuts in to announce, "I do quite like winding people up. I enjoy winding Romola up, especially. Probably because I just adore her. The thing about Romola is" – he calls her "Romsey Poms" only when she's there to be teased, I notice – "that she doesn't seem to have the slightest idea how sexy and beautiful she is. Oh, fuck, fuck, don't quote me on that. She'll fucking kill me." He actually looks quite scared.

The Hour's art director is Eve Stewart, whose CV ranges from Mike Leigh films to The King's Speech. "I've never known anyone like her," Garai says. "In one meeting scene, I had a piece of paper in my hand, which you couldn't see on camera, and I looked down and it was a precis of a story that had been mentioned in passing in the script as a story The Hour might have covered that week – the first African American air hostess, I think it was. And it was a proper printed two-page report, on the original 1950s paper typed on an authentic period typewriter. Factually accurate. I mean, is she mad? But there's something about a show in which every department completely commits to making the show real, which somehow transmits itself to the audience."

Similarly, the on-set office of Suzanne Cave, the costume designer, is plastered with moodboards building a visual backstory for the characters, textured with both contemporary references and those that either layer in other references or add a modern element, helping the clothes read easily to a 21st-century eye. So for Bel's character there are tearsheets from a shoot of Rachel Weisz in AnOther Magazine, which Cave loved for the saturated block-colour outfits (a true-to-1957 trend that looks right and glamorous for today); for Chancellor's character, Lix Storm, there are photos of Katharine Hepburn and Susan Sontag; for Freddie, there is Jack Kerouac and James Dean, all turned-up collars and shy swagger.

The Hour's costumes are a labour of love. The showgirls' stagewear was created by layering strings of pearls, yards of lace and pieces of jet fringing on to old-fashioned corsetted underwear from John Lewis. But the biggest visual challenge, Stewart says, is "boring offices. They are quite difficult to get right, because no one takes photographs of their boring offices, so it's hard to get the information. And it's the detail that matters."

So she was thrilled, when first seeing the Hornsey Town Hall building, to find that the door handles were from the correct period ("You wouldn't believe how long it can take to source the right door handles"). "My job is to create a bubble of belief where the story can become real. I do think that if I can help the actors believe, that transmits itself to the audience, almost in a subliminal way. But on the other hand, I know that this all sounds mad."

• The new series of The Hour begins on BBC2 in November.

The battle is hotting up in the £1.5bn lingerie market, as Agent Provocateur and Victoria's Secret take on the trusty favourite M&S

You can tell a great deal about a nation by a peek in the collective knicker drawer. Note, for instance, that while Marks & Spencer has found its market share in clothing eroded, underwear is one realm in which British women show a remarkable fidelity. M&S retains an impressive 27.4% of the lingerie market. Underwear is an emotional purchase, and that extends to five-packs of practical knickers cut to minimise VPL rather than maximise sex appeal. Women who have defected to value retailers for their kids' clothes and their winter woollies still buy knickers in M&S because they feel profoundly comfortable with the brand. Times may be hard, but there are certain things you just can't scrimp on: always buying your round, and wearing nice knickers in case you get run over. These are what your mum meant by Having Standards.

Knickers, being a cheap and cheering treat, tend to be recession-proof. Over the past four years clothing sales have been flat, but lingerie sales have risen slightly, by 0.6%. The UK underwear market is now worth £1.52bn, according to Drapers. Taking advantage of this opportunity, competition has hotted up this season with the arrival of two Victoria's Secret stores, including a Bond Street flagship. Agent Provocateur, the cult high-end British brand, has made two bold countermoves in response: this week it will stage its first fashion show in four years, while its own Mayfair flagship – just a few hundred yards away from Victoria's Secret – will open in time for Christmas. M&S, meanwhile, has kept itself firmly in the field with an upscale range launched under the name of the young supermodel Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, which became the store's fastest-selling lingerie range of all time when it hit stores in August.

The way lingerie is sold is a reflection of the sexual culture at that moment in time. It is because of this that Agent Provocateur can punch way above its weight in our popular culture. With underwear sets starting at around £100, it will always be a relatively niche product, but by tapping into the zeitgeist, it has created a brand that feels much bigger than it really is. Founded in 1994 by Joe Corre, son of Vivienne Westwood, and his then-wife Serena Rees, Agent Provocateur became a symbol of an aspirational, decadent London lifestyle. Bridget Jones namechecked the shop in her diary; Kate Moss appeared in a promotional video that crashed the website.

The politics of the lingerie market are complex. This is not a simple matter of berating the hypersexualisation of our culture. Agent Provocateur is a highly sexualised brand – never more so than now, when the Fifty Shades of Grey phenomenon has led to a boom in sales of what creative director Sarah Shotton cheerfully refers to as "the kinky stuff". (Apparently, the Whitney bra (£110) and knickers (£95), whose multiple elastic straps can be arranged in various permutations from the vaguely bondage-influenced to the properly rude, is flying off the shelves.)

Yet Shotton makes a case for the brand being a positive force for women. Its most recent promotional video starts with a young woman waiting at a bus stop when an elderly lady is mugged for her handbag. The young woman gives chase, and most of her clothes somehow fall off in the process, so that she chases and overpowers the mugger in her bra and knickers. It is silly, but funny, and the heroine is undoubtedly strong and feisty.

This week's Agent Provocateur catwalk show, Lingerie London, will raise funds for the Seven Bar Foundation, which funds microfinancing for women around the UK to start or grow their own businesses. When I suggested to Shotton that a work-based charity is not the most obvious link-up for a lingerie company, she was adamant that "this felt right because it's a charity about empowering women, giving them confidence. I feel strongly about this, because work was my big opportunity – it was through being at work that I got my chance."

Shotton's Agent Provocateur story is a beguiling one. Fourteen years ago, after studying fashion at Central Saint Martins, she took a job as an office junior at the brand, "which was kind of like an apprenticeship. I did everything, helping out with design or windows or admin or in the shop. That's how I learned." Shortly after joining the company, Shotton, a redhaired bombshell who resembles an English rose Christina Hendricks, tried on her first proper lingerie set, in turquoise tulle. "This was the 1990s, and everyone just wanted to be skinny, and I had these big boobs and bum. I tried this on and it made me feel so brilliant. I've never forgotten that." When Corre and Rees divorced, and the brand was sold, Shotton stayed on as creative director. She says she tries all the pieces on a size-8 and a size-16 model, to make sure everything that goes on sale works and looks good on both.

The Agent Provocateur brand may not have changed, but the sexual play-acting it has always experimented with perhaps takes on a rather different meaning in today's culture than it did when the company began nearly two decades ago. I suggest to Shotton, who is about to take maternity leave to have her first child, that women's sexuality in popular culture has taken a strange turn. "Sexy" has become less about something that women feel or do, and more about simply how they look.

"Oh, I totally, totally agree," nods Shotton. "I was talking to my partner about this, about how weird it is, all these young kids growing up thinking sexy is fake boobs and no body hair. Whereas what gives a woman sex appeal is confidence and energy. Wearing Agent Provocateur isn't supposed to be a display, it's supposed to be a secret that gives you confidence."

The face-off with Victoria's Secret is intriguing, because the brands could not be more different. Victoria's Secret is a commercial juggernaut. Such is the power of the company's payroll that half of the names on Forbes most recent list of the world's highest paid models were "Angels", as Victoria's Secret models are known. Some of the names on the list – for instance, South African 23-year-old Candice Swanepoel, the 10th-highest-paid model in the world – have almost no profile beyond their association with the brand.

When the Victoria's Secret Bond Street store opened there were rumours that upscale labels on the street didn't like the brand "lowering the tone", but there is nothing remotely titillating about the Victoria's Secret shopping experience. In 2011, 10 million viewers watched the brand's annual catwalk show on CBS, a programme that the company proudly points out is "the only one-hour network show dedicated to a single brand".

On the catwalk, the Angels wear tutus, headdresses and the elaborate feathered wings (hence the Angels name) as well as underwear. In contrast to the deliberately daring mood that pervades Agent Provocateur, the Victoria's Secret atmosphere is fiercely upbeat and wholesome, a Christmas shopping carnival parade.

There is nothing to take offence at in the Bond Street flagship – except, perhaps, an inexcusable amount of diamante. The shoppers are a mix of teenage girls with Topshop bags and tourists having their photos taken next to the wings. I have always found there to be something a little unnerving about the Victoria's Secret wings. Their staged and oddly infantilised sex-appeal remind me a little of Playboy bunny ears. And what do wings have to do with underwear, or with sex? Nothing, that I can see. But they have to do with being worshipped. And with glory. And with ideals of womanhood. And that's how you sell knickers.

Jess Cartner-Morley picks out a few choice examples of the go-faster stripe, a hybrid of tuxedo trousers and tracksuit bottoms

'A racing stripe looks brilliant when seen from knee-to-ankle under a trenchcoat'

There is method in the madness of fashion. Or maybe it's closer to the truth to say there's madness in the method, but let's not split hairs. The point is that even when fashion seems away with the fairies, there will be – somewhere – a silk thread of connection to the real world of getting-dressed-in-the-morning. Gossamer-thin and dry-clean only that silk thread may be, but it's there.

And so we come to trousers with a go-faster stripe, or racing stripe, down the outside hem. They will not, let's be clear, make you go faster. This is because, unless you want to look like a clown, you need to wear them with heels. Nonetheless, the go-faster trouser is the new It-pant, knocking the formidable cocktail trouser from the long-held number one spot.

While they may not live up to the utilitarian claim staked by their name, the go-faster stripe trouser is a more practical all-day trouser than the cocktail variety. A brightly printed trouser looks better with a waist or jacket than with a longer coat. Put a coat over a print trouser and you veer into pyjamas-and-dressing-gown territory. You can overcome this, as they do on the catwalk, with hours in hair and make-up, and a couple of grand's worth of status leather goods. But that's not always practical before work. A racing stripe, on the other hand, looks brilliant when seen from knee-to-ankle under a trenchcoat.

The racing stripe is part sportswear (think old-school tracksuits) and part tuxedo dressing (a traditional tuxedo, or le smoking, has a grosgrain or satin ribbon running down the outside leg.) It also looks a bit like the old packets of Wrigley's Spearmint gum, with that bold straight arrow. So you get a bit of dynamism and a bit of formality, and a blast of minty freshness. It's not a cuddly look. Where conversational prints function as an icebreaker – "Are those owls on your blouse? I love owls!" "Me too!" – a stark single stripe is the opposite. It suggests a cool self-possession, a simple document-folder day clutch, and a schedule that doesn't permit hanging around to chat. It's very Céline. You might not be able to stride out in those heels, but the trousers will do the swagger for you. Method in the madness, right?

• Jess wears trousers, £175, by Karl, from net-a-porter.com. Leather top, £199, Marks & Spencer, marksandspencer.com. Shoes, £39.99, Zara, zara.com.

Styling: Melanie Wilkinson. Hair and makeup: Dani Richardson at danirichardson.co.uk using Mac Cosmetics.

The useful thing about buttoned-up shirts is that it's a great way of restyling your existing wardrobe without having to buy anything new

The fully buttoned-up shirt used to be a work outfit. But it's now a Saturday night look, too

You may have read about The Merge. It's the Silicon Valley term for the way technology is blurring the divide between home and work, the post 9-to-5 reality of a world in which it is acceptable to leave work at 5pm to be home for your kids' bathtime, because it is taken for granted you'll pick up where you left off on email by 8pm.

Fashion reflects the times we live in, and what you see here is the first Merge trend. The fully buttoned-up shirt is a traditional symbol of the working day; the loosening of that collar a reflex action of signing off. But now that there is no sign-off moment, the rules are changing. The buttoned-up shirt collar is now a Saturday night look. The very same shirt you would have worn with the top two buttons undone – soft denim, starched white cotton, paisley silk, it doesn't matter – just do up all the buttons, and voilà: you are à la mode.

All you hipsters out there have of course been doing this for at least two years, and are now rolling your eyes at my tardiness. But I make no apologies, first because I partly blame you youngsters for starting this whole Merge business by spending too much time on Facebook in the office. And, second, because there is a very good reason I am reporting on the collar issue now. Until quite recently, a fully buttoned-up collar was still the slightly avant-garde choice, and two undone buttons a perfectly acceptable look for the mainstream-fashionable man or woman. But we have now reached the tipping point. The unbuttoned collar is the new bootcut jean. It is now a faux-pas.

There are lots of reasons to love this look. You can shop it from your own wardrobe, for a start, although of course you might prefer to have a browse on asos.com when work starts to drag at about 4pm. It is a high-impact styling trick, because it is in the very small area of your outfit that everyone sees, even when you are in the street with your coat on. The downside? Well, isn't that obvious? It's uncomfortable as hell. And I say this as a woman who wears high heels every day. I'm not sure I'm happy with the way fashion is going. And I blame the Merge.

• Jess wears shirt, £390, by 3.1 Phillip Lim from www.my-wardrobe.com. Skirt, £250, by Carven, from Matches, matchesfashion.com. Shoes, £49.99, by Zara, zara.com.

Photograph: David Newby for the Guardian. Hair and makeup: Dani Richardson at danirichardson.co.uk using MAC Cosmetics.

Jess Cartner-Morley selects some high-street jackets to help you get that superhero look

This style has been around for a while, but until recently it was called 'wearing your coat like a cape' or 'pretending to be a superhero'

At fashion week, anyone who is anyone shoulder robes. Yes, they shoulder robe. It's a verb, and is what I'm doing here, wearing a jacket without putting my arms in the sleeves. I am shoulder robing the jacket.

This is important. This style has been around for a while, but until recently it was called "wearing your coat like a cape" or "pretending to be a superhero", neither of which sounds like a true-blue fashion trend. Shoulder robing has a good solid garment-industry ring to it.

Shoulder robing is a challenge. You have to stand up straight, so it looks deliberate, and resist the urge to hunch forward to stop the jacket falling off, or you'll look as if someone has thrown a blanket over you, like a criminal being protected from rotten tomatoes, which is not the energy we are channelling here at all. You also have to think what you are going to do with your stuff, because you can't carry a shoulder bag in the normal way. The fashion-week standard is to hold your bag clamped between body and forearm, as if it were a clutch bag.

It's tricky. Which is precisely why it is the alpha fashion manoeuvre of the moment. The fashion week in-crowd love nothing more than pulling off a look normal people find puzzling. Wearing sunglasses was once the alpha fashion manoeuvre, until it started to look post-surgery. Wearing ridiculously high heels at 10am was one, but these days – well, let's just say the Ryder Cup golf Wags are on to this now, and move swiftly on.

Successful shoulder robing makes you look both terrifically busy and glamorous, a bit like a bulging, glossy Filofax did in the 1980s. To pull it off, you have to look as if your schedule is so tight, you simply don't have time to put your arms in your sleeves between high-powered meetings, but must simply charge through the day with the wind in your sails like an urban matador. And now that we fetishise being busy – ask someone how they are and the answer is likely to be, "So beyond manic it's ridiculous" – shoulder robing is about as now as fashion statements get.

• Jess wears jacket, £89.99, and shoes, £49.99, Zara. Top, £18, Topshop. Trousers, £69, Cos.

Photograph: David Newby for the Guardian. Styling: Melanie Wilkinson. Hair and makeup: Dani Richardson at danirichardson.co.uk using MAC Cosmetics.

Jess Cartner-Morley picks out a few pairs of coated jeans and textured jumpers for your winter wardrobe

'This year's jeans-and-jumper combination doesn't look like a fashion statement at all. It just looks like what today looks like. That's how you know you've got it right'

I know what you're thinking. I look as though I'm having a day off. I'm wearing jeans and a jumper, for goodness' sake. That's not fashion. That's just clothes. Where are the bells and whistles?

Oh, my dears, will you never learn? There is no such thing as a day off from fashion. Fashion never stops. It's not just cover girls in cocktail dresses who channel fashion. We all do it, every day, even when we're in jeans and jumpers.

Especially, in fact, when we're in jeans and jumpers. This is the most interesting aspect of fashion, because it's the bit we all take part in. Those people who diligently buy into the vogue for electric blue or the craze for optical prints: they are not exactly a representative cross-section of the population. They're – how to put this delicately? – different. They are fun to look at, but you can't draw too many conclusions from the behaviour of people who willingly wear dungarees, because they are clearly irrational. The off-duty jeans-and-jumper outfit gives away more about your life as it really is.

In half a decade, jeans can go from skintight to falling down, from faded and ripped to a rich indigo gleam. Hemlines go from floor-length to rolled up; waistlines from above the belly button to below your knicker elastic. Woollies flip from chic cashmere (the good times when we have money to burn) to intarsia reindeers (the bad times, when we are seized by nostalgia for childhood and the Way Things Were). A vogue for postage stamp-sized sweaters that end neatly at the waist can be replaced, within a year, by a trend for outsized cardigans.

This year's jeans-and-jumper combination is a coated jean – a waxy finish halfway between denim and leather – worn with a textured jumper. Where this time last year was all about the jolly Christmas jumper, the naive Scandi detective knit or the waffle-stamped textured knit, this year's sweaters are less attention-grabbing. They are the quiet foil to the rock'n'roll coated jean. You look in the mirror and you think: this doesn't look like a fashion statement at all. It just looks like what today looks like. That's how you know you've got it right.

• Jess wears jumper, £110, Reiss. Jeans, £265, by Citizens of Humanity from net-a-porter.com. Shoes, £49.99, by Zara.

Photograph: David Newby for the Guardian. Styling: Melanie Wilkinson. Hair and makeup: Dani Richardson at danirichardson.co.uk using Mac Cosmetics.

Jimmy Choo's niece spent 10 years at French Sole, the ballet-pump label. Her shoes are beautifully made with walkable heel heights, so they really work as an all-day shoe. The lady will go far

There was a time when shoes were just shoes. But the extraordinary designer, who wins the outstanding achievement award at this year's British Fashion Awards, has transformed them into magical objects of desire

The tremendously satisfying thing about Manolo Blahnik, the man, is that he is exactly the way you picture him. The singleminded fashion obsessiveness of Anna Wintour is spiked with the belle-epoque-bonkersness of Ab Fab's Patsy and housed in the body of Hercule Poirot. He is all lush formality and exaggerated polish – a bit like his shoes – both in his clothes (double-breasted suits, bow ties) and his manners. He insists on addressing me as Mrs Cartner-Morley, pronounced with the flourishes of a Spanish accent that has become quirkier rather than softer after 40 years in Britain.

Blahnik is this year's recipient – and we are exclusively announcing this today, by the way, ta-dah! – of the outstanding achievement gong at the British Fashion Awards. Manolo, who will be one day shy of his 70th birthday when he collects his trophy at the Savoy on 27 November, is already a Commander of the British Empire (awarded in 2007). And – better than any trophy – he has been a household name ever since Carrie Bradshaw pleaded with a Manhattan mugger: "You can take my Fendi baguette, you can take my ring and my watch, but please don't take my Manolo Blahniks." And yet the man himself, who today is on the phone to me from Italy, where he is visiting one of his factories, insists he "has no perception of success or failure. I keep looking ahead and thinking about challenges, because that's what keeps me going. If I look back I feel frightened, not happy, because my life is a bit of a mystery to me."

Actually, I know what he means. It is strange to think, now, that there was a time not so long ago when shoes were just shoes, rather than the magical totems of success and femininity they have become. Expensive high heels have become a motif in our popular culture for Stuff Women Want. They are how Olympians reward themselves for success, and the default shorthand of every chick-lit book cover. And the origin of this idea of the shoe as a magical object stems, in large part, from the way Manolo designs them. His sketches of shoes are extraordinary: not inanimate line-drawings but character portraits, sensual and suggestive. Richard Avedon's fashion photography showed us how clothes can lend charisma and attitude to the wearer, by teasing out and emphasising the posture and silhouette of the body. Manolo did the same with footwear. With his sketches, Manolo has done more to open the eyes of the world to the transformative power of the right shoe than anyone since Cinderella.

And yet, Manolo has never really cashed in on the phenomenon he helped create. He has never sold his company. He still personally designs every pair of shoes that bears his name, rather than delegate to a studio. Key roles in the company are held by members of his family, and he has never done a lucrative mass-market collaboration, along the lines of Jimmy Choo for H&M. He is a wealthy man with an enviable lifestyle, but perhaps not as wildly rich as one might expect. He lives in Bath, in an 18th-century townhouse that he adores; he says he moved there in the 1980s because he "could not possibly afford" such a house in London. "But who cares? I couldn't care less about business," he says cheerfully.

Manolo was born in Santa Cruz de la Palma in the Canary Islands in 1942, to a Czech father and a Spanish mother living comfortably on a banana plantation. He paints an idyllic picture of his childhood. "My mother was exquisite. She was born on an island so she was untouched by the outside world, but she had what I call a natural, given taste. And she loved English books, and read to us every night – Oliver Twist, Little Dorrit, Enid Blyton. My father always had on Radio Casablanca, wonderful Arab music, and the maids would sing the Andalucian popular songs. Englishness, and also Spanish and African influences, all of which remain important to me today."

In his late teens he was sent to study in Geneva, where (brilliantly incongruous image) he spent a summer interning at the United Nations. He escaped, via Paris, arriving in London in 1968, and immediately fell in love with England – particularly the England of that era, names from which (Cecil Beaton, David Bailey, Anjelica Huston) stud his conversation like cloves in an orange, lending colour to a modern world one senses he feels is drab by comparison. Prompted by Diana Vreeland, then editor of American Vogue, who spotted sketches of an ankle entwined by ivy and cherries in a portfolio of fashion and set-design sketches, he began making shoes. By 1971, he was collaborating with Ossie Clark; by 1973, he was getting raves in Womenswear Daily.

He learned the craft of shoemaking by painstaking study in the best manufacturing studios. I remind him of something he once said, that he didn't need formal training because he had such good taste. "Oh, what pretentious things one says! I hope I was young! But actually, I do have taste. And it is important."

Just as a delicate stiletto conceals a cylinder of steel, there is an inner stubbornness to Manolo. He has never modified his aesthetic, creating shoes with a slender sole even when the prevailing fashion is for a vast platform. "I hate platforms," he says flatly. "The young girl who is a bit chubby, or whatever, she thinks platforms make her look taller. But no, they just make her look weird." This singularity of vision has meant that the brand drifts in and out of fashion, but for the past few years it has been on a high. (Consider: when Kate Moss got married, she wore Manolos.) He also invests a great effort in making sure his shoes are comfortable, and spends around three months of each year visiting his factories. "I love exaggerated, and I love eccentric, but you must be comfortable. Otherwise it is nonsense. There is nothing charming about a woman who cannot walk in her shoes."

Who does he think looks charming, I ask – meaning, in my shallow way, which celebrities. "Do you know who I think looks wonderful? In Bath, there is a woman who always passes by my house. She wears twinsets, and usually a tweed pleated skirt. Not terribly expensive but good quality, and she always looks just perfect. To me, that's fabulous."

Many people don't seem to consider what's fashionable when buying a coat. Jess Cartner-Morley blames coat hooks

'Once you put down your mental checklist of what is sensible, a whole new world of coat shopping opens up'

There are people in my life who, for four months of the year, I only ever see when they are wearing their coat – people I chat to on the school run, neighbours I wave at, old colleagues who walk their dogs past my house. From November to February, their coat represents their entire sartorial presence in my life. They could be having a midlife crisis and dressing in pyjamas or cocktail dresses, and I'd be none the wiser. Duffel Coat Tina could be wearing nipple tassels for all I know, but she'd still be Duffel Coat Tina to me.

My point is that we are all Duffel Coat Tina to someone. So your coat matters: there might be interesting messages going on in your choice of winter dresses, but a lot of people won't get to read the small print. Most of us don't consider fashion when buying coats, and I blame coat hooks. Our coats don't live in our wardrobes, with clothes-as-in-fashion, but in the hall, with clothes-as-in-kit: wellies, gloves, umbrellas.

Now, the functionality of a coat is paramount, and there will be many days in winter when all you want is to be warm and dry, but winter is a long old drag and there will be times when other things feel important: the impression you make on the outside world, or just the instinct now and then to throw practicality to the wind.

Put down your mental checklist of what is sensible, and a whole new world of coat shopping opens up, and the high street is doing its best to tempt us with shaggy-fur coats that will be a horror show in the lightest shower; sleeveless coats for days when you want a warm torso and frozen limbs; pale wool coats that'll spend half their time at the dry cleaner. The point is, they are part‑time coats: together, they make up a coat wardrobe, but none is a practical purchase on its own. You need the shaggy coat while the pale one is at the cleaner's, the sleeveless one to wear while the shaggy one dries out.

This gold coat, say, isn't very warm and needs clamping closed with one arm if the wind blows. It makes no attempt to earn a functional place on the coat hooks. But I do quite fancy being the woman in the gold coat.

• Jess wears coat, £1,705, by Yves Saint Laurent, from net-a-porter.com. Jumper, £110, by Whistles. Trousers, £219, by Theory, from Fenwick. Heels, £39.99, by Zara.

Styling: Melanie Wilkinson. Hair and makeup: Dani Richardson at danirichardson.co.ukusing Giorgio Armani Cosmetics and Skincare.

When you have a pair of jeans that you are happy wearing, the world is an easier place to be. These Mother Denim skinnies are the perfect shade of blue, flattering, and so comfortable you could sleep in them

Double gold at British Fashion Awards for label worn on every red carpet and copied on every high street

The final gold medal for Team GB's outstanding showing at the Olympics has been awarded fashionably late. Stella McCartney, who created the kit worn by Great Britain's record-breaking team this summer, has been crowned designer of the year at the British fashion industry's most prestigious awards ceremony.

McCartney twice took to the British Fashion Awards podium at the Savoy Hotel, also receiving the designer brand of the year award for a label that this year has been worn on every red carpet and copied on every high street.

The accolades were an appropriate end to a triumphant year for McCartney. Dressed in a black taffeta jumpsuit of her own design on the podium, the designer described 2012 as "the best year to be British … and one of the most incredible years of my life." Her first London catwalk show in 16 years, in Mayfair in February, was favourably reviewed – but her contribution to the Olympics did most to boost her domestic approval ratings.

McCartney emerged the winner from a close three-way contest, with Christopher Kane and Mary Katrantzou also nominated. Kane, whose name has been linked with the prestigious design post at Balenciaga, recently vacated after the surprise departure of Nicolas Ghesquiere, had strong support from within the British fashion industry, while Katrantzou had vociferous champions on the international voting committee. It is a second designer of the year award for McCartney, who received it in 2007.

This was a night in which the breadth and depth of talent in the British fashion industry was rewarded at the expense of some of its most famous names. Neither Burberry, Alexander McQueen nor Mulberry were recognised, though there was a nod to the influence of Burberry in the model of the year award for Cara Delevingne, star of the label's advertising campaigns.

A stellar year for Roksanda Ilincic, with her dresses worn by Michelle Obama and the Duchess of Cambridge, was reflected in her beating stiff competition from McCartney and Victoria Beckham to win the red carpet award, her first British Fashion Award.

The ceremony was a testament to the huge success of the British fashion industry's concerted campaign to raise its profile and status by forging connections with other areas of British public life. McCartney's Olympic connection was a prime example, granting fashion a place at the top table at a time of national triumph. In her speech, McCartney noted how far British fashion had progressed since the time when her decision to leave Chloe and launch a London-based fashion label was met with bemusement and derision by French bosses who told her there had never been a global brand bearing the name of a British woman.

Samantha Cameron, fully signed up as an "ambassador" of the British Fashion Council, presented the new establishment award to Erdem, a designer whose dresses she favours. Princess Beatrice's appearance, handing the special recognition award to departing British Fashion Council chairman Harold Tillman, reflected post-royal wedding ties between fashion and the royals – the Prince of Wales recently hosted a reception in honour of London menswear catwalk shows. Architect Zaha Hadid presented the outstanding achievement award to Manolo Blahnik, architect of many of the audience's high heels. Music and film were also represented, with Ronnie Wood, Lily Allen and Salma Hayek among the presenters.

In the only award voted for by the public, Alexa Chung scored a hat trick, claiming the British style award for a third consecutive year.

The winners

Designer of the year Stella McCartney

New establishment Erdem

Red carpet award Roksanda Ilincic

Designer brand Stella McCartney

Accessory designer Nicholas Kirkwood

Menswear designer Kim Jones for Louis Vuitton

Emerging talent award – ready to wear JW Anderson

Emerging talent award – accessories Sophie Hulme

Emerging talent award – menswear Jonathan Saunders

Model Cara Delevingne

Isabella Blow award for fashion creator Louise Wilson

Outstanding achievement in fashion Manolo Blahnik

British style Alexa Chung

Optical prints – patterns that make your eyes go funny – are best worn simple, says Jess Cartner-Morley

From the perfect statement shoe to a stunning alternative to a LBD and the perfect coat to stroll home in – we've got your festive season styling covered