Style 4455

Alexandra Shulman, the editor of British Vogue, has just written a book. An extract appeared in last Saturday’s Guardian Weekend magazine. One section was headed “You will always be tempted to replicate what you wore at 17. This is not always a mistake”

In Ms Shulman’s case this has led to a weakness for mid-1970s fashions, but she went on to add, “If the 80s was your teen moment, it’s likely to be a bat-wing sleeve or padded shoulder and oversized jacket . . . that beckons you from across the shop.” Which made me feel a lot better, as it went a long way to explaining this recent purchase.

Now that's what I call 1985

The hair! The jumbo earrings! The bat-wing sleeves!

OK, I was slightly older than 17 when this pattern came out, and it's not one which I owned first time round, but I did have a lot of blouses like this. I also had a penchant at the time for old-fashioned men's dress shirts (that is, the shirts were old-fashioned not, necessarily, the men who originally wore them). Happily for me, all photographic evidence of this period was lost in a house move some time ago.

Anyway, proving that you can take the girl out of the eighties but you cannot entirely take the eighties out of the girl, when I saw this pattern at a vintage fair recently I just had to buy it. And now I have the editor of Vogue telling me that this is only to be expected.