'Leather has been mainstreamed. It isn't foxy or rude or stick-your-neck-out, any more. Let's celebrate'
It is not often fashion welcomes a genuinely new species but today I stand before you in a genuinely freshly minted fashion garment. Not a revival or a rehash, but a crossbreed made possible by advances in scientific thinking. Yes, sort of like the cockapoo, but less fluffy. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you: the Respectable Leather Skirt.
Leather has been mainstreamed. It isn't foxy or rude or stick-your-neck-out, any more. Like leopardprint, it used to be decidedly risky, but is no longer even risqué.
There are two forces at work here. The first is that the mass fashion industry has figured out how to produce leather economically, so a once-exclusive fabric is now on every high street, making it, inevitably, a little less remarkable.
The second factor is that the sexiness of leather feels ever more tame, as the pop cultural fashion lexicon out-raunches itself. Curious to recall, now, that a tight leather skirt to, ooh, the mid-to-upper-thigh, used to be what particularly saucy pop stars wore in videos. In the age of Blurred Lines and Wrecking Ball, wearing any sort of a skirt in your video basically marks you out as an old square. Miley would surely laugh in the face of a stylist who dared suggest anything as old-ladyish as a leather skirt.
Which is fine by us old ladies. Because we are now free to celebrate leather's unfeted practical side. For anyone who eats lunch at their desk – especially those Pret salads with the springy bits of frisée that bolt Houdini-like from even the most careful of fork work and find their way into your lap – a leather skirt is, frankly, genius, because it is wipe-clean. Dab of Kleenex and you're right as rain.
And, once you liberate leather from the requirement to be sexy all the time, it has unlimited possibilities: this season, primarily, as a longer-length skirt, one that works perfectly with a blouse or a posh sweatshirt, and that has the demure swish of a lady's petticoat combined with the toughness of a blacksmith's apron. Leather, like a once-rough neighbourhood, has been gentrified. Celebrate with an overpriced coffee (and no need to panic if you spill it.)
• Jess wears shirt, £100, by J Crew, from netaporter.com. Skirt, £95, whistles.co.uk. Shoes, from a selection, dunelondon.com.
Hair and makeup: Sharon Ive at Carol Hayes Management using Lancôme.