What an unholy alliance of sexual promise and brisk efficiency the body turned out to be. All thanks to Donna Faske, of Forest Hills, New York State - or Donna Karan of New York City, as she is better known. It was Donna who, in 1985, introduced an innocent world to her “revolutionary system”, a collection of tailored pieces and awesome amounts of Lycra, that would carry the working woman triumphantly into the boardroom and beyond - and much of it revolved around the body.

Not, under any circumstances, to be confused with The Body (Elle Macpherson has words for people who muscle in on her title), the body was basically a leotard in stretch cotton, stretch silk , stretch cashmere... but with a sexier name. And press studs. These snapped to attention somewhere beneath the crotch, offering a contract to all women: buy me and your shirt-tails/T-shirt/jumper will never again come adrift from your waistband or skirt. The really cunning part was that the body could look like a shirt, a jumper or a one-shouldered vamp-clamp. Except that real shirts, jumpers and vamp-clamps never looked that tight. Still, we pretended not to notice. Have you any idea just how barren of clothes for the working woman the average department store was then?

By the early Nineties Donna's advertising campaign featured a beautiful female model being sworn in as President. Bodies were replicated the world over. But like so many dreams, it was a false dawn. My, those press studs could rub - and not in a good way - and snap out of attention at the most inopportune moments. Veterans report emerging from said boardrooms to find their cleverly camouflaged body-shirts/jumpers up round their ears. Now there's a revival. Top Shop, Bodas, Falke (on netaporter.com) and Woolford all have them - all aimed, presumably, at the young or forgetful. This is one trend where age (and wisdom) are an advantage.

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