Because I have the same Christian name as my mother, when I was a child I was always known not just as Susie but as Little Susie, to distinguish me from her. Those who’ve known me all my life occasionally still refer to me in this way, although when anyone new on the scene uses this rather special term of endearment, anyone I’ve known for less that 30 years, say , I can give extremely short shrift. I’m not so little now, in fact I don’t believe I ever
really was, but I wonder if this family nick-name hasn’t rather encouraged me to treat myself as a younger person than I truly am.

This cautionary thought passed through me as I was trying on a red and white striped Sonia Rykiel jersey emblazoned with a large royal blue heart on the second floor of Harvey Nicholls last week. It was a delightful garment, with confidence and high cheer woven into every fibre, but it as the sort of thing I wore at nineteen. My husband came over to look, though, and said it was exactly the kind of thing I wore when we first met, so that clinched it. I discarded the limp, drab jumper I was wearing (in some dreadful shade of grey)
into a crisp white carrier and continued my shoppig trip with my heart not on my sleeve, but even more frankly, it seemd to me, on my chest. My next stop was the Marc by Marc Jacobs concession where a selection of baby doll dresses caught my eye. I’ve always felt a special kinship with the baby doll style. The very first piece of designer clothing I ever bought was a dress that Betty Jackson made in about 1988 out of fawn coloured linen with large navy spots. It had a flat seam just under the bust and fell in loose pleats just above the knee. It made me look a tiny bit like a 1940s pierrette. I wore this dress everywhere and had a lot of good fortune in it. (In it I was had a fully fledged Debbie McGee moment when I was singled out of a large crowd at a magic show to be assistant to the master magician himself.) As I grew older I
began to favour dresses cut on similar lines but with a maturer, more flattering silhouette, an abbreviated empire line, narrow under the bust and gently skimming the hips and stopping exactly on the knee. This is the sort of dress I return to again and again because it best suits my shape

Looking at myself in Marc’s charming black and pink flowered short sleeved baby doll silk gown with short sleeves and voluminous tiered skirt I just couldn’t work out if I looked too childish. Or rather I knew I looked childish, but I hoped it was in a good way. I know the answer with volume is to ensure there are narrow regions to set the fabiric off nicely. I know it’s wise to keep the accessories very crisp and grown up to counter the naïve excess, but I thought the dress looked best with bare feet and loose hair. I didn’t want to wear it against the grain of itself, I just wanted to put it on. The feel
of all that fabric on my skin felt luxurious but also daring. This sort of
dress equalled a very small rebellion. What a bore that we all have to try and look as narrow as possible all the time! Is this a fashion that will ever ever end? As I looked in the mirror it felt as though there was an interesting air of mystery about all that spare fabric. It felt like something universally decreed was being flouted. I thought of the heroine of Thomas Wyatt’s best poem They Flee from me, that sometime did me seek, ‘but once, in special/In thin array, after a pleasant guise,/When her loose gown from her shoulders did fall,/And she caught me in her arms long and small….’

I bought the dress, although two weeks have passed and I’ve not quite dared to wear it yet. I will when the sun comes out perhaps just at home on a Sunday, where I’ll be safe in the knowledge that I’m aiming less for the look of a sixties singing sensation than an early sixteenth century courting
ourtier. Through squinted eyes and dim fashion history recall it could almost read as the Duchess of Malfi. Of course hers was not the best fate of any character of that period but it was none the less impressive and memorable: ‘Cover her face, mine eyes dazzle, she died young.’