An ace up their sleeve?
Spaghetti straps: they strike fear into the hearts (and arms) of all women (bar supermodels and teenagers) and flatter almost no one, drawing unwelcome attention to our (whisper it) bingo wings. The proliferation of sleeveless dresses on the high street has simply added to the problem. And cap sleeves are fooling none of us. Even Dame Helen Mirren has spoken out on the issue.
‘There are no dresses with sleeves, and we need to bring back the sleeve,’ she declared in 2008. She even joked that she should design a range herself, calling it simply Dresses With Sleeves.
But now it appears the tide is turning. Marks & Spencer’s style director Belinda Earl has made a pledge that from now on 90 per cent of her dresses will have proper sleeves, which extend to our elbows, if not our wrists.
The move comes as Ms Earl battles to entice us back into store and stem the brand’s falling clothes sales (the retailer posted its eighth consecutive quarterly fall in underlying sales of clothing).
‘You told us you wanted dresses with sleeves, so, for autumn, 90 per cent will have sleeves,’ she said at the M&S annual general meeting. ‘I can promise that I mean real sleeves, full, three-quarters and half,’ she said. ‘To be sure that we meet your expectations on this, cap sleeves, which cause much debate, have been reclassified as sleeveless. So it’s offi cial: sleeves are in.’
I was recently treated to a preview of M&S’s autumn/ winter 2013 range and was suitably impressed. While delivering on the sleeves, M&S has not fallen into the all-too-common trap of raising hemlines in direct correlation. The furthest thing from frumpy, these are the frocks I predict will be making grown-up glamour the look de rigueur this autumn.
‘There are no dresses with sleeves, and we need to bring back the sleeve,’ she declared in 2008. She even joked that she should design a range herself, calling it simply Dresses With Sleeves.
But now it appears the tide is turning. Marks & Spencer’s style director Belinda Earl has made a pledge that from now on 90 per cent of her dresses will have proper sleeves, which extend to our elbows, if not our wrists.
The move comes as Ms Earl battles to entice us back into store and stem the brand’s falling clothes sales (the retailer posted its eighth consecutive quarterly fall in underlying sales of clothing).
‘You told us you wanted dresses with sleeves, so, for autumn, 90 per cent will have sleeves,’ she said at the M&S annual general meeting. ‘I can promise that I mean real sleeves, full, three-quarters and half,’ she said. ‘To be sure that we meet your expectations on this, cap sleeves, which cause much debate, have been reclassified as sleeveless. So it’s offi cial: sleeves are in.’
I was recently treated to a preview of M&S’s autumn/ winter 2013 range and was suitably impressed. While delivering on the sleeves, M&S has not fallen into the all-too-common trap of raising hemlines in direct correlation. The furthest thing from frumpy, these are the frocks I predict will be making grown-up glamour the look de rigueur this autumn.