When we were taking the pictures for this page, the photographer was looking through the camera and frowning… “Lean in a bit, leg a bit straighter, um, that’s not working, try the other one”, and I was shifting about awkwardly in my Thunderbirds-puppet modelling style, and eventually he sighed and asked, imploringly: “Jess… can you try and be a bit… taller?”
Which kind of sums up why a look like this is tricky to pull off. This sort of outfit looks dead elegant and airy when it’s hanging off some 19-year-old pipe cleaner in Vogue. Put it on a normal-sized frame and it crumples and squashes like a Dr Seuss top hat.
But since I am not ready to give in and wear sensible shift dresses for the rest of my life, I am persevering with this look, which I am calling Three-Storey Dressing. Three-Storey Dressing means an outfit consisting of three vertical sections – like a Fab ice lolly (although I would caution against wild colour experimentation).
Three-Storey Dressing has a lot to do with shirt-tails. Years ago, there was a New York Times style piece entitled “Flying Shirttails, The New Pennants Of Rebellion”, which waxed lyrical about the untucked tail as a motif of nonconformism. This idea got lost, for a while, in a slew of shirts worn with jumpers that reached almost to their hem, so only an inch of shirt-tail was showing. That was preppy, not rebellious, mimicking the sliver of cotton cuff which peeks under the sleeve of a well-tailored jacket.
But the new generation of generously cut shirt and more boxy jumper has got those shirt tails flying again. (The 19-year-old pipe cleaners sometimes wear this look with a skirt, but that divides your height into four, which is even less easy to pull off: I’m sticking with trousers.)
Three-Storey Dressing also comes into its own when working out how to wear that new, short, chubby jacket you’ve got your eye on. Those jackets tend to not quite meet the top of your trousers or skirt, leaving an awkward in-between inch. Better to lengthen that out, and wear a long, fluid top – a silky T-shirt, or something knitted and tunic-like – under the jacket and over slim trousers. And high heels, since that’s the nearest us norms get to becoming taller.
• Jess wears Shirt, £219, by Jil Sander, from fenwick.co.uk. Jumper, £63, store.americanapparel.co.uk. Trousers, £59, cosstores.com. Shoes, £405, jerome-dreyfuss.com.
Hair and makeup: Sharon Ive at Carol Hayes Management.
