There are those who say you can judge the state of the economy by the thickness of September’s Vogue magazine. You can also judge the thickness of Vogue’s readers by the extent to which they obey the magazine’s diktats for autumn. To save you a shoulder-dislocating plough through nearly 400 pages, I will summarise the trends threatened for this season: tartan, stiletto shoe-boots and Thatcherite pussy-bows.

Quite simply, these designs are so unspeakable that even fashionistas will question their unquestioning obedience. 1) Tartan. This should only be worn in jest, or hired from Moss Bros for the shortest possible time for a wedding. Tartan is best kept as carpet in damp Scottish B&Bs. 2) Stiletto shoe-boots. These are a mutant GM crop created by cobblers and should be resisted as unnatural, uncomfortable and plug-ugly. 3) Thatcherite pussy-bows. These are matronly on the over-12s and enough to make you down shopping tools and actually relish the recession.

For these, and other credit-crunchy reasons, I must suggest burning Vogue and its sister magazines on your autumn bonfire. Once the cockles of your heart are warmed by this revolutionary act, you want to open your wardrobe doors and reassess your sartorial weaponry. If you are anything like me, you may find items in there ripe for reinvention. And if, like me, you are rubbish at hemming or sticking this year’s military buttons on last year’s civilian coat, talk to your local seamstress at the cleaner’s. On no account should you enter a shop.

The contents of my cupboard, I realise, feature a lot of French tailoring. I wore tailoring when I had a proper job in an office, rather than a shed, and did not sit around typing in my Sweaty Betty manked-up sportswear all day.

My skirts and jackets are all slightly the wrong length or shape now, but with a little work I realise they could look like something out of the office scenes in Mad Men, the Sixties drama set among the sharp-suited advertising execs of Madison Avenue. (I’ve holed up in bed most evenings recently re-watching series one on DVD, since series two is not on until 2009.) But the sight of cinched waists and figure-hugging seams does make you realise that Britain Needs Tailoring to contain all that flab now slopping around in Juicy Couture tracksuits.

When not working the retro recession look, it may be sensible to imagine you have a ration book, limiting life to the necessities. Obviously this refreshing attitude will cause the economy to crash and burn, but it’s doing that anyway, and it’s not your fault. They started it – the sub-prime slime, the oil barons, the gambling hedge-funders, the mendacious estate agents. Or as the amusingly radical US environmentalist Edward Abbey says: “Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell.”

Which brings us to the sin of handbags, and their ever-increasing growth in size and price. Repeat after me: wanting a £4,000 Hermès Birkin bag (with a waiting list so long it’s now closed) is plain daft and slightly on the disgusting side.

I have two (2) handbags: the big one and the little one, both the same make, both bought in airports when zips burst. I am more Calvinist than Calvin Klein about handbags. And here’s my other economy: say no to scent. I know this is bordering on the weird, and some people feel naked without perfume, and at any fine party I will find I am the only person wearing White Supermarket Soap, but just think of the billions wasted, wafted into the air.

My dislike of perfume stems from an early teenage trauma when I found that everyone else at the church hall disco was also wearing Charlie by Revlon, and also from our recent useful discovery that if you put six children in a tent and they spray themselves liberally with Lynx Africa, it keeps off the midges. Certain fragrances bring on a Pavlovian reaction – a man may think he is merely wearing Aramis, when in fact to me that is the choking stench of Evil Ex-Boyfriend from Manchester.

Indeed, I can only agree with the designer Karl Lagerfeld on the smell question. “I have no problem with journalists – many are friends,” he once said. “Only not if they are really stupid, or if they’ve got bad breath, or if they smell. Yesterday [at a Chanel show] I had a problem. I said, ‘I’m sorry, you’ve got to tell this woman that she needs to be taken away. Her smell is not possible.’”

kate.muir@thetimes.co.uk

Kate Muir’s novel West Coast is out in paperback from Headline Review this week

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