My octogenarian correspondents – ladies, you know who you are and I love you – probably won’t like what they’re about to read. A rock-chick season is upon us, mixed in with a suicidal, or at least a really quite stroppy, Goth vibe, and a great big (or rather skinny) dollop of French Vogue fashion editrice.

What this means in practice is far more black in the shops than is healthy for any of us, and some tremendously challenging skinny silhouettes.

I knew this was going to be hell when I saw it on the catwalks back in March. No, no, said my pluckier (twentysomething) colleagues. It’s going to be really cool. But you can’t argue with your notes – and my notes said droopy clothes, prossie wader boots, sad-sack silhouettes and Brüno-like quantities of leather.

I dare say you’re thinking (especially if you are male), sit this one out. I actually tried this tactic at the dawn of New York Fashion Week last month, when, owing to a slight miscalculation on the timing front, I had to turn up to the first show of the season in mufti. All around me, editors were unleashing their inner Chrissie Hyndes and I was in red and Capri pants. Oh, the shame.

The point is that when a black tidal wave of depression hits fashion, it affects everything. Perceptions change; today’s ladylike becomes tomorrow’s cutesy-overload. Obviously you can sit it out – but not in bows, flounces and smocks, because you’ll look like Little Bo Peep.

This is a tough old season, in every sense. And after six months of pondering the toughness, I’ve decided it’s a good thing. Prettiness can slide into tweeness before you know it. To avert this catastrophe, I’m nominating not the pencil skirt – which, when all is said and done, and heels and tights (Sheer, not sheer? Patterned, not patterned?) are taken into consideration, are a palaver – but a pair of black jeggings (as at Phi, above right). I know they sound like something only a teenager should be wearing, but I was converted by the J Brand ones. (Trilogystores.co.uk has one of the best selections of jeggings around.) I like J Brand’s because they’re super-stretchy and very soft, and they have little zips at the ankle, which is as rock-chicky as I’m prepared to go.

Once you’ve got the right pair, wear them with everything, including (if you want some thigh camouflage) the smocks you bought last year. You won’t look Bo Peep, because you’ve toughened the smock up with the jeggings. You’ll look particularly fetching if you sling a pea coat or a jacket over the top.

Alternatively, I’m going to flag up the harem pant. I know, I’ve spent the past year deriding them. But they’ve been refined. The crotches are no longer around your knees (unless that’s where you want them to be). They’re drapy, new looking, really quite flattering (especially Vanessa Bruno’s) and, hell, if you pushed the boat out with a leather jacket, you’d look almost like an editor from French Vogue. I’m game if you are.

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