Is anybody else COMPLETELY and UTTERLY terrified of white clothes? Like sweaty palms, heart palpitations, blurred vision, night terrors? Most people see white as crisp, virginal, cool and timeless. I see red wine, bike oil, tea drips, smudged nail varnish. I see grey, I see cream, I see off-white. I see one-wear only. I do not see Daz Brighter than Brights. Godammit, I am petrifid of that pesky colour. Every white item I own has a tragic past and has faced early retirement/ resides in an undignified heap of ‘must do something about that stain’, but never will.

So when I rather excitedly decided on a more left-field approach to wedding guest attire for an upcoming wedding in France – i.e – the gold sequinned disco shorts, neutered with a white camisole and blazer, well I surely did not know what I was getting myself into. On a recent stint to Bristol, I set myself the blazer challenge in the ginormous Cabot Circus shopping centre – 8 shops and NO blazers later, I was thinking I may have to throw it all in and disinvite myself from the wedding. Is this cream or off-white? Is that a fake-tan stain? Can I afford to spend 100e on a jacket I know I (or somebody else) is going to ruin on the night? Does this dry clean? Will the dry clean cost more than the jacket itself? Can I wear this in Winter? And on and on and on and on.

Eventually, I abandoned ship and decided to buy the cheapest thing I could find online – a waterfall number from Asos. It arrived in plastic, layered in bubble wrap, ensconced in a box. To my knowledge, there are no lipstick smudges or changing room momentos, although I surely won’t know until the day of the wedding. For it is staying neatly filed away from the sweaty, dusty, real-life world until then.