It is the common plight of the fashion expert that she or he be called on by the inner muse to dash off excoriating bulletins about the latest horror to darken the fashion horizon, only to find themselves wearing it (and furthermore loving it and further furthermore, writing elegies about it) a year later.

It has been like this for me with orthopaedic-looking wedges (love, love, LOVE), shoulder pads (adore) and leggings, which regulars will know I now believe to be second only in sliced-bread sartorial greatness to jackets. I’m even coming round, slightly, to the jumpsuit, although I still think the loo palaver isn’t worth it – they don’t look that good.

But I can confidently promise that you won’t be seeing me in a catsuit this side of my current lifetime. Admittedly, I could be scarred by my catsuit-interfacing experiences. Once, when I was desperate for something glamorous (and stretchy – I was six months pregnant) to wear to a celebrity-infested gala, the Versace PR kindly offered to lend me something from her sample rail. Thinking my problems were solved, I got on with the day’s work, leaving my mercy dash to the PR’s office until about five to six. At which point the only item left on the rail was a white Lycra catsuit.

Alarmingly, the catsuit has only just begun its current assault on the catwalks. And it’s probably due a name rethink, on the basis that catsuit could be deemed a bit sexist. But let’s stick with it for the moment and take ourselves off to Balmain, no less, where the catsuit was practically obliterated by Swarovski crystals, where masses of fabric swagged across the hips like curtains in a burlesque theatre and where something weird and bondagy went on around the legs. Let us then alight at Chanel, where the catsuits were more conventionally catsuity, in black Lycra with white splodges, and where the models looked mightily hacked off to be wearing them. I mean, there are unflattering outfits, and then there are outfits that make you look like Jessica Simpson before the weight loss. Pam Hogg, the head mistress of fetish clubwear, probably did the best ones – metallic shoulder-padded masterpieces with colour blocking and geometric stripes. By best, I mean most exhibitionist, which I take it is what the average catsuit-wearer is looking for.

For those who have patiently digested years of lessons in what not to wear, the return of the catsuit may seem contrary. But fashion is contrary. I won’t begin to tell you how to wear one so as to avoid making your thighs look like two record-breaking Yorkshire puddings, because if you’re contemplating one, you presumably don’t care. The point about the catsuit is that now that mothers like me, with teenage daughters, are wearing leggings, platforms and jumpsuits, the echt teenager needs to reclaim some territory of her own. If she’s got the body and the nerve, good luck to her. There’s probably a white Lycra Versace one doing the rounds of Oxfam as I write.

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