If you’re anything like me, your life will regularly be afflicted by a yawning reality gap. I’m referring to the difference between those daydreams in your mind’s eye that have you, perhaps, eating a wholesome breakfast of berries with your playful brood of children…and the rude actuality of you all bickering across the marmalade while your youngest shoves Shreddies into his nappy and your eldest berates you for not allowing i-Pod headphones to be worn at meal times. Or the chasm between, say, the baked sea bass as it looks on the pages of Jamie Oliver, and the sorry, fishy little offering that you present to incredulous guests when you throw an impromptu supper party. 

As it is with breakfast and bass, so is it with our wardrobes. Over the years, in idle moments at the hairdresser or theatre, I have invented “the perfect dress” or “the absolute coat”, only to find that nothing quite so right exists in the real world. Shopping for clothes, much like shopping for a husband, involves a series of compromises. Most of us most of the time venture out in little more than “it’ll do” clothes – not because we’re lazy but because we haven’t yet alighted on perfection. 

But when, on the rare occasion we do, it is cause for celebration. This explains why I spent part of last Thursday week dancing the rumba through passport control at Heathrow airport. I had just discovered an “if only” garment, one of those items I had dreamt about for  - ooh – decades, and suddenly came across while waiting for flight BA277 to board for Boston (which made it tax-free too! Some days are truly made in heaven). 

My if-only top had to have long sleeves (I’m not on speaking terms with my upper arms at the moment) and a forgiving cut around the middle. It also needed a plunge neck (my chest can still cut the mustard), and it had to be something, anything, other than straight black, a colour which has lately infected my wardrobe like the bubonic plague itself. 

And there it was.  

Folded, quietly, in Ted Baker. A wow top with a deep V at the front, a flight of covered buttons at the breast and a clever way of casting forgiving glances towards all of my problem areas. Within 10 days, the if-only top has soared to pole position in my wardrobe. I have worn it to parties and suppers, shoots and shopping trips. And it works wonders every time; the dream and the reality, rolled into one.  

Isn’t that what women really want? (And I do mean women, not girls - most of whom could go out in the packaging from a prawn sandwich and still look fabulous)… we want things that look a million bucks and cost slightly under £50… we want them to glamorise our good bits and gloss over the rest… we want forgiving plus phwoar.  

If only, eh? Well, Ted Baker’s not a bad place to start.

Published You Magazine, December 4 2005