Hot stuff

For a brief period, in early 2019, boiler suits had a high-fashion moment. ‘Why the boiler suit should be your new season style staple,’ boomed The Daily Telegraph fashion pages.

‘Power up: how boilersuits are crossing the fashion boundaries,’ wrote Morwenna Ferrier in The Guardian. And by spring that year, we were being encouraged to team up our boiler suit with statement belts, turtle-neck cashmere, standout colour and strappy heels. The micro trend soared and fizzed like a defective firework before being overtaken by the boiler suit’s arch enemy, the jump suit, as a staple of an about-town gal’s wardrobe.

As you might expect, I did my bit to sustain the boiler boom, though the allure of P&C^’s ‘Wild Ones’ Ronnie Boilersuit featuring Shangri-La inspired chainstitch and Zippo pocket at £140 passed me by. Similarly, the Donna Ida Sadie Boiler Suit, a snip at £325, and so too Mondo Corsini’s Hepburn, a caviar-linen Boiler Suit at £345.