No one has issued a decree, there have been no rules, bans or curfews on people wearing whatever-it-is out in the open, but somehow a perfectly attractive garment has transformed itself into something that Just Looks Ridiculous.

The shape is wrong, the length is wrong and so is the width. Suddenly you look as on-trend as Hyacinth Bucket.

This is why you should never, ever, believe anyone who tells you to spend a lot of money on classics because they will be a good investment: they won't.

With clothes, whether cheap or dear, it's all the same: one day, not too long after you bought them, the fashionable shape will subtly change, your clothes will be thus rendered hideous at a stroke, and that will be that. Investment shopping, therefore, is a fool's errand.

And very soon now, we will all find that our pretty dresses and tops have turned ugly. Those lovely little things that made us feel so feminine will suddenly look like a load of unstructured tat.

That's because shoulder pads are on the way back. Shoulder pads, by the way, are a fashion which literally messes with your head – they make it look tiny so you have to big up your hair massively to compensate.

Already bits of the 1980s have crept back into clothes shops: the footless tights are a Topshop girl staple, bodies – those things that looked like swimming costumes but unfastened under the gusset for practical reasons – are back in underwear departments and even legwarmers have had a moment.

Now it's the turn of shoulder pads. Back in their heyday we wore them in everything, sometimes with unfortunate consequences. A layering of garments each containing its own pads could mean you striding around with shoulders jacked up around your eyebrows and wider than the average door.

The look could become a little too American football player, but shoulders without pads looked rounded and sloping and little and generally silly.

A pair of sharp shoulders was so essential there were even portable pads to carry in your handbag in case, and it was a terrifying thought, you ever found yourself perilously au naturel in a top that had somehow been born deformed.

Shoulders that could take someone's eye out were part of the working woman's armour back then. Eighties working woman didn't have the luxury of being herself in a wrap dress that made no excuses for her female shape, she had to dress like a kick-ass male/ female hybrid with male shoulders, and often trousers to match.

Under her perm and inside her padded jacket she was safe from the men who wanted her back at home with the kids where she belonged (obviously this was in the days before men discovered they wanted to be back home with the kids themselves).

Hopefully, if shoulder pads do come back, it will be into a very different world, one where women don't need to broaden their shoulders to prove they are just as good as the next bloke.

So this time, they will just be a silly fashion statement – and a way of making your waist look smaller, which is always nice.


Turban regeneration


Shoulder pads are not the only thing on the way back – very soon now we are all going to be wearing the Urban Turban – but probably only within our own four walls.

The thing about the turban as a fashion item is that women secretly love the look, but are too afraid to walk around with one on their head.

As a garment it's flattering, it's cute but it's a bit of a bold statement.

it's a look that can be extremely glamorous but also has just a hint of 1940s housewife about it, but in a good way.

There were several floating down the aisle at the Harvey Nichols fashion show recently, and they caught the eye every bit as much as the designer dresses.

Maybe we fans should start an Urban Turban day, when safety in numbers would make us feel not quite so silly.


Packed your bags?


Apparently, the most popular little bit of home to sling in our suitcases when holiday time comes around is teabags, because there is nothing like a cuppa to make us feel at home wherever we are in the world.

I kind of go along with that – no-one does tea like we do tea – but what I would really like to take with me wherever I go in the world is my pillow.

Because even more than teabags, there is nothing like your own pillow for making you feel all safe and totally at home.