On average, it takes me 12 months from spotting a spanking new trend on the catwalk to incorporating it into my own wardrobe. This dilatory pick-up rate might seem like a major impediment to being a fully fledged fashion avatar. But I like to think that being a year behind the vanguard places me closer to Everywoman, since it is a scientific fact that a truly challenging idea takes five years to go mainstream and quite often, Everywoman is too sensible to let it get that far.

Anyway, bang on cue, I find I like brogues. A year ago, I thought they were second only to Gucci’s 2001 gerbil coat on my list of all-time rank fashion items. But back in 2007, when we were only intermittently troubled by the prospect of an economic “squeeze”, brogues looked a bit too Radclyffe Hall, the three-piece-suit-wearing author of The Well of Loneliness, possibly the world’s most famous lesbian book, which practically no one has read. This is not to cast aspersions on Hall’s style credentials. She hit on androgyny 60 years before Jean Paul Gaultier did, and for a woman who in profile looked like a Clanger, she carried it off pretty well. But now that we have Lindsay Lohan, Hall’s brand of lesbian chic looks a bit full-on.

Anyway, fast-forward a year and either I or brogues have got our act together. You can find them in polished tan leather, or shiny perforated black in Topshop. If you want avant-garde and don’t care about knocking the cat out when you remove them at night, there’s rubber (see a brand called Melissa, in Browns, £50, above). If you fit men’s sizes, you can buy a quality pair in Church’s for the price of a pair of Lanvin socks. Or, if you don’t mind being accused of ghoulishness, you could stalk some shoe menders in the City, where there are bound to be a few uncollected pairs.

My favourites however, are Miu Miu’s stretchy, foldable black patent brogues. Who knows what the point of the folding stretchiness is, other than to make the £275 price tag seem vaguely justifiable, but the patent and the elegant cut are the perfect blend of boyish girlinessness. This is important, because some brogues are so fogeyish you can feel yourself turning into Nicholas Soames the moment you pop them on.

Then again, fogeyish, along with dependable and solid, seems to strike just the right tone now. Lightness of touch remains key, however, even in matters of solidity. Brogues perform at their absolute peak (on a woman) worn with bare ankles and turned up jeans, or even with an A-line skirt or pretty tea dress. This you can do because the other wonderful thing about brogues – apart from being flat, comfortable and not ballet pumps – is that they disguise hearty ankles. Fogey or Sapphic, that’s chic.

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