'There will always be a need for a status jacket'
There is power dressing, and there is status dressing. Power dressing is about work; status dressing is about a more subtle wielding of position, wealth and influence. Society women had status dressing, even back when only actual queens had power. These days, women have both kinds.
The jacket I am wearing here – the soft, shruggy, look-at-me, non-blazer jacket – is most definitely not a power jacket, but a new type of status jacket. I would call it the Post-Blue Jasmine Jacket, if that wasn't just too esoteric even for moi. If you saw the Woody Allen film Blue Jasmine, or even if you only saw the posters, you may remember the cream Chanel jacket that Cate Blanchett's character wears. The way she clung to that jacket, like a soldier stumbling home from war in bedraggled uniform, seemed so desperately sad that it made me realise how the Chanel boucle jacket – which has reigned unrivalled as the blue-chip status jacket for ladies who lunch, as well as for ladies whose power is so unassailable that they are free to flirt with feminine whimsy in the boardroom – is beginning to fade in lustre, as even the most timeless classics will. The Chanel jacket will no doubt be back – this was its second or third coming, after all – but for now its tweed and pearls have a wilting kind of grandeur, like the insignia of a mighty army in dignified retreat.
This leaves a potential wardrobe vacancy, because there will always be a need for a status jacket, not only for trophy wives, but also for those in possession of position, wealth and influence in the sense of it being payday and them having bagged the best table in the bar. The Post-Blue Jasmine Jacket is deliberately, defiantly informal. It might channel the quilted, Saturday-morning-yoga jackets of Isabel Marant, or Jonathan Saunders' bumptious hipster bombers. The colours are brighter and sharper than the blended tones of Chanel boucle; the silhouette sporty and round-shouldered, rather than feminine and feline. It's a completely different jacket, but it means exactly the same thing. Update your lexicon accordingly. And if you don't believe me, watch the film.
• Jess wears jacket, £39.99, mango.com. Jersey, £18, topshop.com. Jeans, £165, by Paige, from paigeusa.com.Shoes, £240, kurtgeiger.com.
Hair and makeup: Sharon Ive at Carol Hayes Management using Lancôme.