It's important to get your Christmas party look right – and this year that is a black jumpsuit
Funny thing about human nature, how we feel the need to locate ourselves at the centre of every story, even when it is patently not about us. Like when something momentous and out of the blue happens in the news, and you have a conversation about it, and someone mentions that they were just getting out of the bath when they saw it on the TV news. And then someone else pitches in that they heard it when they switched on the car radio after the school run. This information is irrelevant, but it feels important to the person telling you. And there's nothing wrong with this, nothing at all – it comes from an impulse to engage with the world, to arrange our thoughts in a way that makes some order out of the crazy human experience. Although, if we're honest, we're only pretending to be interested in other people's version of the crazy human experience. We're all too busy obsessing over our own.
Fashion provides us with a way to feel part of things. We get to dress up and get on stage, play walk-on parts in the zeitgeist. Which brings us to Christmas. Whatever you think the story of Christmas is really about, you'd struggle to make a case for it being all about you. And yet the impulse to look Christmassy is quite extraordinarily strong. How else to explain the survival of the cracker paper hat?
But cracker hats can be worn only in front of people who regularly see you at your worst – your family and your office colleagues, in other words. Besides, during this front-of-house segment of the festive season before you retire to the sofa with the biscuit tin you need to look not only dressed for Christmas, but dressed for 2012. Which is why getting your Christmas party look right matters. And this year, the Christmas party look is a black jumpsuit.
The point of wearing a one-hit outfit – a dress, or a jumpsuit, rather than separates – is it shows you to be jumping two-footed into the evening, which is the only way to go with Christmas parties. As for why to choose a jumpsuit, over a dress: a jumpsuit is news, in a way that a dress can't be. And if there are headlines to be made, surely you want them to be about you?
• Jess wears jumpsuit, £39.99, zara.com. Leopard heels, £119, kurtgeiger.com.
Hair and makeup: Tracy Quinn. Stylist: Melanie Wilkinson