The way to do summer-in-the-city dressing is to bring enough sunshine into your wardrobe to remind you that it’s summer out there, without looking as if you’ve come to work dressed as the sunglasses-wearing smiley face emoji. You want to change the mood in the way that opening a window and letting the breeze in changes the air in a room. This can happen in lots of ways: a rolled shirt sleeve, a bare ankle. You don’t have to wear spaghetti straps for your clothes to speak summer. You can wear white (read: Wimbledon) or yellow (sunshine) or gingham (picnics).
The sarong-wrap skirt is this summer’s crossover hit. Crossover, in this case, from summer holiday to summer-but-not-holiday. No one actually wears sarongs on holiday any more (how the kaftan killed the sarong will have to be a long read for another day), but the shape is still recognisable as beach-flavoured.
Remember: we’re just opening a window to let the breeze in here. We’re not stripping off and climbing out to lie on the lawn. So this skirt is not to be worn as you would on holiday, over a swimsuit. Treat it as you would a pencil skirt, back when pencil skirts were a thing. (I miss pencil skirts, don’t you? They are straightforward, effective, and universally flattering. But they are also in style Siberia right now, so no point getting soppy over them.) The sarong wrap, which is effectively a pencil skirt given a twist-and-knot on the diagonal, is as close as you are going to get.
A narrow knee-length skirt with a sleeveless top is a no-nonsense smart daywear look. Don’t just take my word for it, take it on the higher authority of Michelle Obama, who owns this look. The balance of fabric to bare skin works well. Neither is dominant, so you look neither noticeably naked nor unnecessarily covered up. Nakedness becomes a non-issue, which is probably how you want it in the office.
This skirt is, in one crucial way, superior to the pencil skirt. I am wearing a heel here, but you could get away with a flat shoe, something you can rarely do with a pencil skirt without looking as if you are about to do the doorstep shoe-change-of-shame. And the option to wear flats is, I think, essential for summer. After all, you never know when you’ll have to climb out the window and lie on the grass.
• Jess wears linen skirt, £25.99, mango.com. Top, £18, next.co.uk. Heels, £59.99, zara.com
Styling: Melanie Wilkinson. Hair and makeup: Laurence Close at Carol Hayes Management
