The return of the trouser suit to your working wardrobe.

It isn’t often that I dedicate a whole post to a single outfit but then it isn’t often that you are approached by a brand like Winser London and invited to choose a special new outfit. It was easy for me to make my choice, I wanted to celebrate the return of the trouser suit. I showed you a glimpse of it in my last post because it is what I wore during the day on my 50th birthday.

Single breasted blazer; satin back sporty trousers; Silk and jersey short sleeved wrap top; Ponyskin Clutch; Sandals past season

You may remember that we had an early morning meeting in the pretty Cumbrian village of Cartmel.

Although the blazer and jacket are sold as two separate pieces, they are also designed so that you can wear them as a suit. I can’t tell you how delighted I am that the trouser suit is back. I spent the nineties and early noughties dressing like this. Every work day was a no brainer. I would wear suits with a blouse and heels on high powered days and then with a t-shirt and flats for days at my desk. I’m wearing the blazer buttoned up in all of these pictures but with a t-shirt I would leave it open. It hangs beautifully because it is made from satin backed crepe.

I’ve been talking about upping my working wardrobe lately. I’m trying to reduce it to a few, very high quality pieces. Because I work with creatives, the temptation to wear jeans every day is high. I spend a lot of time presenting strategies to non-marketers and I find that dressing well helps me to deliver my thinking with a little more wallop.

When I worked at Selfridges, my priority was always to leverage my staff discount on good quality tailoring. These pieces from Winser London are every bit as good as the designer brands I used to wear. In fact the trousers are better because they have an athleisure cut (i.e. an elasticated waist). I think I will probably have them shortened slightly so that they hit my ankle bone and don’t interfere with my shoes.

The silk blouse is from Winser too. It makes me a bit nervous because it’s dry clean only so I will be saving it for important days. It has a jersey back which means it hugs you from behind, helping the silk to drape in swathes.

So, I would like to say thank you to Winser for giving me such a beautiful outfit to wear on a very special day. My friends Lisa from ~The Sequinist and Michelle from RetroChicMama were invited to choose something too. You can see Lisa’s post here and Michelle’s here.

And… the very best bit? Winser invited us each to choose one of our favourite pieces as a competition prize for a lucky reader to win. So you could win the blazer I’m wearing in your choice of black or navy, the Tilda silk shirt that Michelle chose and Lisa’s favourite Milano hooded coat. The details are on my Facebook page here. Good luck, I hope you win.

As you read this, I will be enjoying a day out at The Chelsea Flower Show with my friends from the Over40Collective. We are being dressed and hosted by a brand that I have never featured before. I’ll tell you more about it next week or, if you’d like to see what we’re wearing (and what we’re up to), follow the day on Instagram @midlifechic.

Housekeeping

There are just a couple of things I’ve been meaning to mention.

Facebook

Firstly to anyone who follows Midlifechic on Facebook. I suspect that nefarious things are afoot there – for some reason the links to items I feature often don’t work. My marketing background tells me that they break links so that people don’t leave Facebook and move on to another site. It is really annoying but there is nothing I can do about it and I understand that it frustrates you. Don’t forget that you can have my posts delivered straight to your email Inbox. I will never sell your details or share them with anybody else and they are kept securely in accordance with data protection requirements. The emails sometimes include exclusive offers from brands so it’s not a bad idea to sign up. You can do that here.

Emails from readers

This week I found lots of emails dating back to February in my SPAM folder. If you have emailed me and not heard back, that is why. I’m so sorry – there are 262 of them so it will take me a while to catch up but I will.