£55, littlewoods.com

There’s a thing in fashion, and actually in lots of other things such as water features and Mr Whippy cones, known as the ‘trickle down effect’.

Most people will tell you this is the process by which trends work their way from the catwalk down through the rungs of the fash ladder until they reach the high street, the market stall and eventually the bargain bin. But I prefer to think of it as the process by which the powers that be decide on the next big thing, and then we steadfastly ignore it for five years until we’re ready to accept it into our wardrobes and lives.

Midi skirts, for example, were pushed doggedly season after season, while we all stuck our fingers in our ears and sung “la-la-la-la-la” like an obnoxious toddler, our thighs still in chilly minis until 2011. At least they finally got their moment in the sun, though – wide-legged jeans have been supposedly ‘on their way back’ for almost a decade now, peering through the windows like an uninvited loner at the skinny party, and they’re still showing no sign of getting an invite.

So it’s in light of all this, and with a big whoop of much joy on behalf of my bunions, that I tell you stupid heels are finally going. BUH-BYE, bizzarro-stilts! So long, pain trotters! When even Victoria Beckham – the woman for whom being eight months pregnant in Westminster Abbey called for a pair of brutal six-inch stillies – is proudly showing off her flat Church’s boots on Twitter, we can confidently call time on the reign of the Ridicu-Shoe.

And ohhh, what a tedious reign it has been. Excellent for Compeed and gin distilleries, less successful for feet and female moral. What looked edgy and daring in about 2007 has now become the hallmark of the identikit, hobbling lady on every high street from here to John O-Groates. I’d like to present a graph showing the inverse relationship between average heel heights and the number of us chasing down criminals in the street to perform a citizens arrest, but I’ve been too distracted by my throbbing toes to collect the data.

Of course I’d like to stress firmly here that I am not anti-heel. No siree. I’m not heelist, or indeed heelphobic. Some of my best friends are heels. I’ve worn heels in the snow; heels on the beach. I’m the patient who once held up a trip to A&E because I didn’t want to arrive in flats.

Millie sandals, £129 Hobbs

But there is a big difference between the sexy, percussive stride of a really great heel and the debilitating totter of a ridicu-shoe.  For if a shoe fails to do its one, basic function – being a thing you put your foot in and walk on – then it’s not really a shoe. It’s like buying a cup with a hole in it, or a house with no roof. It’s little better than the £400 Louboutin equivalent of those yellow buckets from the Early Learning Centre we used to hold on our feet with string.

But the perfect heel is a rare and wonderful thing – and of course, different for every wearer. For some, it’s one you can dine in, dance in, then march to the kebab shop in; for others, one you can run for the bus in without any fear of stacking it down Kingsland Road (I still have the bruises); for some it’s the barely-there elevation of a half-inch pump, for others a stomper with a whacking great platform.

Personally I’ve always been obsessed with two-inchers. Not mimsy kittens, but sturdy, elegant mid-height heels with a good amount of clop that make your calves look really great. T-bars, Mary-Janes, that sort of thing. On top of a good pair of two-inches I feel powerful and important, like having my own little stage.

Molly T-bar shoes, £35 Topshop

And then of course there are the flats, which finally trickled down and are now set to woosh like a lovely, soothing river into our wardrobes. Brogues have lasted the distance and been rewarded with every colour, fabric and finish under the sun, while jazz shoes, plimsolls, moccasins, proper sporty trainers and Jesus sandals are all still loafing about to help see us merrily through summer.

Just think of all the things we’ll be able to do, now that we don’t have to do it on ridicu-shoes! Maybe we’ll start running for buses when we don’t even NEED to. Maybe we’ll start running, generally. Maybe we’ll just dance harder, faster and longer, then march to the kebab shop without ever having to make foot-pavement content. Maybe giant heels will start looking edgy and daring again, rather than just default.

I wouldn’t hold my breath on the wide-legged jeans though, if I were you.

Dr Brandt CC Mat, £34, available exclusively from Feelunique.com

But when I calm down, take a deep breath and stop riffing on Daisy Steiner’s Ode To A VCR, I realise some stuff is invented to make our routines simpler, not more complicated. And so it is with Dr Brandt CC cream. I do like a BB cream, but they can be a little lightweight for me. (For what it’s worth, esteemed coeditor Lauren Bravo swears by nothing but BB cream and a little powder, and she has skin like a duchesses’ freshly plumped peach satin pillow case.) Dr Brandt was the CC cream pioneer - stop laughing, that’s a thing! – and invented an all in one, oil free, mattifying formula created to even out your skin tone, so you can look as smooth and evenly toned as someone in an advertisement.

The cream feels quite heavy – hardcore BB fans might be alarmed by this, but I loved the fullness of the coverage – it was reassuringly textured, like an enevelope full of birthday money. And as well as instantly mattifying your skin, the formula reduces oil production over time, so you’re investing in future non-shininess. (Obviously we are PRO Shinyness – but no-one likes face shininess). It’s perfect for summer as it has an SPF of 30, and it has staying power – you could probably wear it during Bikram and it wouldn’t slide off your face.

Chantecaille Bio Lift Concealer

Chantecaille’s Bio Lift concealer (£57, Space NK) protects your skin and moisturises, concealing wrinkles and stopping them in their tracks as it contains the alluringly named botanical Squalane. I’m beginning to notice the very first signs of ageing (I’m in my late twenties, but I’m a giggler, a grimacer and a face scruncher) and the area around my eyes definitely looks a little smoother and more polished, giving me the expression of someone who rarely raises her voice and eats a lot of kale.

But the best bit is the way it makes your eyes pop. Like many ladies I’m a long time Touche fiend (even though the YSL people rejected my marketing slogan “It’s like Tippex for the face!”) and like many people I’ve talked to, Touche kind of stopped working for me. It was as if my skin decided it was cheating and decided to stop playing ball. But, perhaps because the Bio Lift is good for your skin, my under eye area has really taken to it. It lights up my eyes like the insane recessed, reclaimed Venetian glass bulbs lit up that kitchen in Grand Designs the other night. The one where the people in it were so posh that they didn’t have to live in a caravan when their house was being built. That’s what fifty quid concealer does.

This is why we wear perfume. Everything else we put on our bodies might give a very cerebral message about our lives – an astronaut’s helmet here, a “world pie eating championships” sweater there – but perfume is pure sex and sensation. Never try to smell “like a meadow” when you could smell “like having it off in a meadow”. Scents react differently to everyone’s skin, and a really awesome fragrance will only warm and enhance the pure animal musk coming out of your pores – isn’t that the most carnal thing you ever heard?

But how, I hear you ask (which is odd because I have very poor hearing), how will I know that the people smelling me will be thinking ‘sex in a meadow’ and not ‘used condom thrown in a field’? Because if a perfume is doing its job, it will make you want to have sex with yourself. If you get a waft of something lovely on your shoulder and immediately have to throw your coat over your lap for some crafty self sufficient time, you’ve got a good thing going. Making strangers crave you is a hollow and meaningless exercise if you’re not already engorged with desire for your own genitals.

Here are some fragrances that will make you want to throw your knickers out of the window and lock your bedroom door for a week:

Marc Jacobs Femme

Marc Jacobs Femme

This is the one to put on when you’re wearing nothing but white broderie anglaise, and you’re at the mercy of someone else’s wandering hands in a verdant, deserted park. This smells like cool cotton sheets on sunburn and kissing that went too far. This is what Nicole in Tender Is The Night would have worn during her affair with Tommy. It’s the gardenia. Gardenia is what good girls smell like the moment before they fall.

Hermes Kelly Caleche

Hermès Kelly Calèche

It’s the scent of a girl on girl teen MILF porn trope, albeit one with very high production values. There’s a powdery hardness to it – it’s all a bit gilt and marble, ‘do me in the Trump Tower’, but when it stops just sitting on your skin and yields to it, there’s a sensory rainstorm. You might smell it on your best friend’s mum’s scarf as you lean in to kiss her cheek, and then spend the rest of the day squirming with guilty, horny confusion.

Versace Bright Crystal

I suspect this is what Marissa Cooper was wearing when she lost her virginity to Luke in The O.C. You know, before she went massively emo and probably started wearing something manly from Creed, or motor oil. It’s joyfully, trashily, irresponsibly adolescent, sparkling and smouldering simultaneously. If you’re giving your first blow job at your boyfriend’s parents’ beach house, spritz some on your hairband before you tie your ponytail. Use your Jersey trust fund dollars for multiple bottles you can keep in your car, bag and any bedrooms you wind up in.

Thierry Mugler Angel

Thierry Mugler Angel

This is an odd one. On me, it smells like a Magic Tree that has been hidden in an old trainer for reasons that probably seemed sensible at the time. But on some ladies, it’s a superpower. A force of nature.

During my first term at university, I befriended a girl called Alison. I thought we’d be pals because we both had our Reading wristbands on, and she decided I was a good prospect because I was carrying a bad pink Dior handbag. (I was wearing Pink Crystal at the time). Alison had attended a very minor public school and thought she was posh, and inexplicably spoke in a high pitched fake Australian accent. Despite claiming a connection with the Rothschilds, she had the most suburban highlights I’ve ever had the misfortune to lay eyes on. Anyway, after about three days of misery I decided to distance myself from this whiny, human chihuahua, but bumped into her at a social event and ended up snogging her. All night. (I’m pretty much straight, and I wasn’t doing it to impress any boys – we were locked in a cleaning cupboard.) She was wearing Angel, and it was as potent as LSD laced MDMA. It made her irresistibly fanciable. If this one works on you, it could be someone else’s Kryptonite.

Ever since the first cave lady crushed up a beetle and rubbed it on her face before a trip to the nearest water hole, we’ve used cosmetics to try and make people kiss us. Iodine, pearlescent fish scales, beeswax… and their eventual evolutionary zenith, Bonne Bell lip gloss.

Because, as a 14-year-old at an all-girls’ school, the logic went something like this: everybody likes cake. I will make my face smell like cake. Boys will then want to kiss my face. It was foolproof.

And easier, trendier and greasier than spending all day with my head in a packet of Mr Kipling was the American Bonne Bell and their wonderfully American range of glitter-crusted, dessert-themed, soda-infused lip lubes, all guaranteed to leave your hair stuck to your face in a breeze.

Occupying a wonderful space on the venn diagram of cosmetics between ‘pretty’ and ‘pudding’, they were plenty cheap enough to buy in bulk from Superdrug, but still had a gloopy novelty that left Carmex and Vaseline in the shade. Among my favourites were cherry cola Lip Smacker, birthday cake lip ‘frosting’ and chocolate fudge sundae swirl gloss. Did I mention it was American?

For more or less the whole of year nine, Bonne Bell was our currency. We swapped them, gifted them, kept them in sticky piles in our pencil cases. So prolific was our collection that we would take them out during English lessons and line them up along the whole length of the desks, firmly convinced that understanding Tess of the D’Urbervilles wouldn’t serve us nearly as well in life as smelling like the cheesecake rotisserie in a Wimpy bar.

Of course, for more or less the whole of year nine we also waited patiently for the queue of suitors to arrive, Pied Piper of Hamelin-style, in a cloud of leather thong necklaces and Lynx Africa. They never did.

But now, when I want to make my face smell of cake, I generally just eat some cake. And I do it for ME.

Ahh, the cover-up. A far less exciting term when it’s applied to clothes than to TV murder cases, cover ups are the maiden aunt of summer fashion – cumbersome and not much fun, but if you don’t invite them to the party you know it’ll end in the cold shoulder.

When the vast majority of all spring/summer frocks are frustratingly sans sleeve, the cover-up suddenly becomes your goosepimpled arms’ only refuge post-6pm. Or, let’s face it, anytime after the flush of your morning dash-about has cooled and you’ve remembered it’s only actually hot enough for bare arms in the UK about 3.5 days a year, half of which you’ll spend leaning over a freezer cabinet in Londis trying to extract the last un-melted Twister.

And so on you plod through the endless parade of cardigans and blazers and denim jackets, feeling dowdier and a bit more like Lorraine Kelly with every one, until autumn arrives and you can put a proper coat on again.  Unless, that is, UNLESS, you find something dazzlingly awesome and build your outfit around it instead – less cover-up, more ‘I guess convention dictates I wear something under this, but gee, do I have to?’

Enter the kimono. Voluminous, fringed and tie-dye, this Topshop number is both a scene-stealer and a multitasker supreme. Belt it over a black jersey maxi, throw it on with rolled-up jeans, make like the model on the website and wear it over a bikini or just swap it for your dressing gown and lie around on a chaise lounge all day smoking cigarillos and talking to everybody in a Marlene Dietrech voice.

The tie-dye print even makes it look a bit like a thundery British sky, which is fitting. Last year’s bobbly cardigans will tremble in its wake. Cover-up: covered.

Long gone are the days when ‘print’ meant a polite little floral or a prim polka dot. This summer we’re pretty much being commanded to bedeck ourselves out like our Nan’s conservatory sofa, so it would be rude not to go prints all the way (before they become ‘the art formerly known as prints’ and we have to cover ourselves in symbolic squiggles instead).

As a rule of thumb, if it would look good on a plastic cafe tablecloth then it’ll look GREAT on you this season. ‘Aztec’ and ‘tribal’ are still hanging about like an enthusiastic gap year student at a house party, but there are also ‘tropical’ (think Carmen Miranda), tie-dye (if you’re lucky you’ll still have the stuff you made at Brownie camp) neon paisley (think PG Wodehouse at a rave) and photo prints, which are like wearing an entire landmark destination on your arse. Not that your arse isn’t already a landmark destination, of course.

So here are our pick of the loud, the proud and the really rather busy. Extra marks for clashing them. Points deducted if you apologise for being “a bit bright”.

Printed sleeveless bodycon dress, £32 Topshop

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'Let's Go Crazy' Printed sleeveless bodycon dress, £32 Topshop

Oh nail polish, wherefore art thou? Not on my nails anymore, that’s for sure. Probably on the pavement. The carpet. The floor of the bus. Dancing away on the wind, like glittery silver blossom. Nothing, not even the priciest brands or the most industrial-strength top coats, will keep polish intact on my nails for longer than a day.

Even the mighty Shellac gave me a week of wear at best, then left my nails like shredded tissue paper underneath. I’ve resorted to marigolds for the washing up, and never offering to find the end of a roll of sellotape for anyone.

Now, I’m not about to let ‘fast-chipping nails’ be added to the menagerie of physical failings we’re supposed to worry about as women – the list is already down to my flaky, substandard elbow. But as someone who feels so much affection toward nail polish, it just seems unfair how keen it is to escape life on the end of my fingers.  “I love you!” I tell each lovely new shade. “Errr, I thought this was just a one-night kinda thing…” it mutters, and makes a dash for the floor or plughole.

So when I tell you that Dielle polish actually stayed glossy and perfect for three days on me, you will appreciate the small miracle. On a normal person’s hands, that’s like, six! Eight maybe. This stuff has no commitment issues. It sticks around and makes you breakfast.

And far more importantly, Dielle also has ethical backing. Founder Rosalie Audoin lived in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, for 12 years, and is committed to putting the proceeds from Dielle towards charities making a difference for Haitian women and children. Recent campaigns include The Haiti Hospital Appeal, and The A21 Campaign Against Human Trafficking.

On top of that glowing recommendation, the collection is also completely non-toxic and designed to cater for every skin tone, with names like “Majestic Obsidian” so that you can pretend to be a warrior space princess from the future. I tried Everlasting, a pleasingly muted teal, and Modern Goddess, a spacey midnight metallic, with a lick of Lustre Gel Coat on top to keep them shining for longer.

In its shapely bottles, Dielle makes a covetable dressing-table addition, and at £12 a pop can definitely give all those quick-chipping, non-saving-the-world premium brands a run for their money. I think we’re going to be very happy together.

Dielle is available from Not On The High Street, several London boutiques and its own site, with more stockists announced soon.

Printed pencil skirt, £20 Very.co.uk

You’re most likely to hear this rule from your granny – but doesn’t she know it’s going against nature? Lauren Bravo explains why blue and green should definitely be seen

So obviously false is this little platitude that we really shouldn’t have to waste screen inches debunking it – but just in case there are still people out there secretly putting on a turquoise frock with an emerald jacket and dancing round their room with the curtains drawn lest the vicar should see, let’s do this.

Firstly, whoever first coined this rule is going against NATURE. It’s the anti-Wordsworth of outfit assembly. Have they never stood in a meadow and looked up at the sky? Have they never been to the seaside, is that it? So they decided to punish the rest of us? Blue and green is one of the oldest fashion choices there is, along with ‘brown and brown’ and ‘lava-red with dinosaur khaki’.

Secondly, speaking of poetry, I strongly suspect that this might be one of those rules that arose purely because it rhymed – just like “tequila before wine makes you feel fine,” or “never trust a dog who looks like a log”. Which is all well and good, but do we want to be filling our children’s heads with these nonsensical limitations when everyone knows that the poshest poetry doesn’t rhyme anyway? We shouldn’t be denying ourselves potentially great outfits just because someone wanted a level 7 in their English SATs paper.

Thirdly, just as with all fashion myths, this one was clearly instated because somebody did it badly once. My guess is it was somebody’s auntie Marge at a wedding, who piled on so much grass-green eyeshadow with her cornflower crimpelene that she looked like the lady in that Vladimir Tretchikoff painting. This will not be you, don’t worry.

Think joyful splashes of complementary jewel colours rather than matchy-matchy blocks and you’ll be fine. It’s Mary Katrantzou, not the Virgin Mary standing in a field. Or an Asda uniform. This gloriously clashy Love Label pencil skirt from Very.co.uk, for example, does all the courageous work for you – like a kindly baroque leopard who’s wandered into a rave. All it needs is a t-shirt and you’re done.

Now go forth, dressed like the sea and sky, and be seen! Be seen by all! Unless you’re doing green tights, in which case we should probably talk.

Got a fashion myth you’d like busted? Comment below or tweet us @ShinyStyle

Obviously there are proper dilemmas about wars and poverty and the disintegrating moral fabric of society, but we don’t have a hope in hell of solving those. The brunch one is like Sudoku – if we really put our minds to it, we can probably work it out with a pencil.

M&S Limited Collection Cotton Rich Fit & Flare Skater Denim Dress with Belt, £45

The thing is, unless you’re weepingly hungover and need someone to pour you into your tracksuit bottoms and lead you to McDonalds, brunch is a stealth formal affair. You’re still eating fried mushrooms smothered in ketchup, but the mushrooms were probably foraged by an artistic intern curating a Vine feed, and the ketchup has a bechamel quail base tempered with locally sourced botanicals. You need the outfit to match – something that’s all “threw this on AND WHAT?” but also something smoking enough to get the flat white and organic cupcake guy to give you the eye. And something that can stand a little quail ketchup spillage. Also, you’re going to want sleeves. You probably had your arms out last night – come the morning after, the standard practice is that you put the guns back in their holsters.

Where do you go for such a number? One of the Spitalfields boutiques staffed by ‘resting’ actresses who hand stitch wonky hems? Anthropologie, who have many brilliant brunch options for a mere three hundred quid a pop? The situation is frustrating enough to make you turn to gin, stained tracksuits and McDonalds, but all you need is this BRILLIANT M&S denim shirt dress that can be accessorised six ways ‘til Sunday and costs less than fifty quid. As it gets lighter and brighter, your hair can get bigger, your wedges will get fiercer and you can pop the buttons open until the flat white guy’s eyes pop out. On chilly, less reliable days, brogues, bright opaques and a snuggly knit will transform it faster than Madonna was transformed from garter flashing sex lady to Scottish Widow. If anyone feels like thanking Shiny Style for this invaluable wardrobe suggestion, we accept gifts of Anthropologie vouchers and organic cupcakes.