Tonight:
9°c
By what strange alchemy so many designers decided to sprinkle polka dots over everything this spring, I do not know. Maybe there was a glut of black-and-white spotty fabric going cheap when they were knocking up their collections.
Or maybe they just figured that we needed cheering up. After all, polka dots are nothing if not jolly.
Other benefits: they are easy to wear, they are a change from stripes, make you look youthful and encourage random men in the street to stop and give you flowers. OK, so I made the last one up. But you never know.
If you are a child of the Eighties, you may justifiably feel traumatised by the polka-dot trend, on account of having once had a ra-ra skirt and a devotion to Strawberry Switchblade.
In which case, you have full permission to avoid the black and white variety and opt for different colour combinations instead - although that would mean missing out on such classics as Balenciaga Editions's silk dress, Michael Kors's sleeveless linen shift and almost half the spring oeuvre of Henry Holland.
Black and white spots might be the starkest, most graphic choice, but there are softer options, too. Pink and white, say, will be easier on the eye, as will smaller dots which from a distance make the fabric look almost self-coloured.
There is something very childlike about polka dots which probably both attracts and repels women in equal measure, depending on how you feel about dressing like your nursery school self.
But that's what accessories are for: sidestepping the tricky issue of whether you feel comfortable in a trend and paying lip service to it via your feet/arm/neck instead.
Our polka-dot picks of the season: Charlotte Olympia's linen platforms, Miu Miu's bowling bag and French Sole's spotty pumps. Truly [bad joke alert] this spring you could do worse than join the dots.
