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Close your eyes and picture the scene. The air is warm with adrenaline and fake-tanned flesh, and thick with name-dropped designer labels. The atmosphere is one of camaraderie, but also competition; the scent of hairspray and this season's cult perfume almost, but not quite, masks an underlying buzz of nerves.
No, I'm not talking about a Premier League dressing room on a Saturday. I'm talking about the ladies loos in your office, or an office very near you, at around 6.30pm one night this week or next. Because we are about to face one of the toughest fixtures in the fashion calendar: the Christmas party.
The top three all-time worst wardrobe-crisis-inducing moments, in no particular order, are: the job interview, the first date, and the Christmas party. But the Christmas party wardrobe crisis is, arguably, the worst of all. After all, if you dress really, really badly to a job interview or a first date, chances are you never have to see those people again.
Dressing for Christmas parties is hard work for the same reasons that the parties themselves are often quite hard work. First, Christmas parties tend to be about getting drunk with people you already know, rather than meeting new people. It is much more difficult to impress people with your dazzling wit when they have heard all your funniest and most faux-self-deprecating anecdotes twice already. Second, there is the pressure to be all festive and twinkly and marzipan-sweet, and no one apart from Cheryl Cole manages to do this without sacrificing all fashion cred and sex appeal in the process.
So it makes sense that the first coping strategy of getting dressed for a Christmas party is the same as for dealing with the actual party: fix yourself a large drink. Just enough to stop you taking the whole thing too seriously. Go slow on the top-ups - 'tis the season to be merry, not so hammered that furry antlers start to seem like an amusing accessory.
The one unbreakable rule of Christmas parties is that festive-themed accessories - antlers, Santa hats, tinsel trims - are a bad idea. Not because I'm trying to be some sort of couture-obsessed killjoy, but because Dressing Up As Christmas screams of dumbed-down literal mindedness. In other words, it's not just that the Santa hat looks stupid, but that it actually makes you appear to be stupid. Beyond that, trust your instinct: the outfit that makes you look at your reflection a few seconds more, that makes you start to imagine yourself having a good time, is the outfit you should wear. And what's more: we think we've found that outfit for you. These party outfits are Christmassy in a Wonderful Life kind of a way, rather than a Four Christmasses kind of way. Some of them even have sleeves. Are we good to you or what? Why, I almost feel like wearing a Santa hat.
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