I t’s safe to say that this is an outfit I would not have foreseen myself wearing when I first spied Julia Roberts in thigh-high latex boots with a Lycra body and a tiny skirt on screen in Pretty Woman. Yet here I am, in over-the-knee boots and a demure, flowery dress that, if not exactly a tea dress, is definitely the sort that suggests drinking Earl Grey from a cup and saucer, rather than calling room service for champagne. It is as if the two Vivian Wards – the streetwise, gum-snapping one and the polka-dotted, polo-match-attending one – are dressing for a job share.
Over-the-knee boots, until recently NSFW, have been gentrified. They are for fashion, not for pulling, and you can tell. They look different. The new generation are not the shiny, black kind, wipe-clean on the outside and sweaty on the inside. They are suede, or velvet, or at least soft leather, all high-maintenance fabrics that you would not risk on a street corner, for fear of splashing. Also, they are probably not black. Instead, they are Armani-ish shades of sophisticated, understated grey, petrol blue, mushroom.
And these are not thigh-high boots. They are over-the-knee boots. I don’t just mean that they have a new name, although that is significant, as is the fact that this new name avoids mention of thigh in favour of the less-saucy knee. The new style of wearable tall boot ends over the knee, but only just.
The most important change is what you don’t wear with them. You don’t wear them with a short, tight dress. Nor do you wear them over skinny jeans. You can wear them with something short if it’s loose; this is lampshading and is in vogue as a cool way to do dressed-up. But lampshading, as the silly name suggests, is a bit outré for most offices. More low-key, and just as modern, is to team your boots with a hemline that covers their top edge. This feels counterintuitive – the boots are such a look that the instinct is to show them off – but playing them down is in its own way a strong look. Like wearing Pretty Woman boots is, you know, no big deal. Over the knee? Yes. But not over the top.
• Jess wears dress, £110, massimodutti.com. Boots, £160, aldoshoes.com
Styling: Melanie Wilkinson. Hair and makeup: Laurence Close at Carol Hayes Managment.
