Images of huddled, slovenly Brits wending their aspirational way to America and embracing their adopted country’s glossy habits are so inevitable that they no longer excite much comment. Kate Beckinsale went there, lost her snaggled, tea-coloured Brit teeth and acquired a new bosom. Kate Winslet lost several stone and gained the perfect, caramel-coloured blonde mane. Catherine Zeta-Jones lost her low forehead (it’s a plucking thing) and slightly lived-in under-eye excess baggage and acquired a royal status that could never have been hers had she remained here.

The litany of converts to US style includes the millions of British women who found themselves even slightly tempted to acquire an unaffordable shoe fetish during the great reign of Sex and The City; anyone who’s visited New York, been seduced by the deceptive simplicity of American chic and returned vowing to open a chain of Korean nail salons in the UK; and scores of journalists and stylists who go west declaring that they’ll never forsake that famous British negligence, only to book in for tooth whitening the moment they clear customs.

But hark, succour to British pride is at hand. UK Harper’s Bazaar believes that the style influence is two-way traffic. The latest issue, featuring its annual list of Britain’s 50 best-dressed women, claims that us Brits are an international inspiration. This is true up to a point, and would be very heartening if it weren’t for the fact that the woman bestriding the top of HB’s list, Gwyneth Paltrow, is American.

Ah, but according to Sara Buys, Harper’s Bazaar’s fashion features editor, since Paltrow started living in the UK full-time “she has developed a less polished, more daring style”. Meanwhile another American, Madonna (in tenth place), has found the edginess and tailoring in London she has always loved.

I know what Buys means, although one glance at Madonna in full gawd-lovaducks-isn’t-life-grand-when-you’re-down-the-old-dog-and-duck mode suggests that her grasp of what it means to “dress British” is still a bit hazy.

It’s not the Americans’ fault — it’s just that their refusal to believe that perfection isn’t a futile pursuit means that genuine British style (clothes retrieved from the unwashed pile, make-up that’s more a question of build-up) is more attractive as theory than reality.

As Kim Hersov, the extremely glamorous, elegant — and American-born — editor-at-large of Harper’s Bazaar, notes: “There’s a simplicity to American style which I admire and don’t wish to down play.” While Hersov says her style has definitely “loosened up” since living in London, she concedes that this may have been to do with separating from her husband. “I can now dress far more for myself,” she says. It’s also worth noting that the Brits Hersov admires — Amanda Harlech, Virginia Bates, Isabella Blow — are actually pretty slick and sleek within the parameters of their quirkiness.

There is two-way traffic, but Americans still influence us more than we do them. The truth is that ever since The Mayflower, the Brits who settle in America have been hard-working, puritanical types.

And what could be harder work than maintaining the flawless, honey-hued and evenly toned skin that is the camouflage of every successful Manhattanite, while your sisters back in the motherland look on with a secret twinge of envy?

American services to style

The perfect caramel blonde; minimalism; Paris Hilton; the $10 manicure;
Marc Jacobs; Cindy Crawford; flawless tawny skin, all year round

British services to style

Overly dyed hair; Boho; Jordan; Topshop; Alexander McQueen; Kate Moss; skin that would be flawless if not for the bruises we acquire when drunk

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