First of all, I would like to say ‘well done’ to Billie Piper for her gorgeous Ossie Clark on Friday Night With Jonathan Ross. Not quite so well done on commenting on how musty and old it smells, but she looked so damn awesome I will forgive her. I will also forgive her for Doctor Who-related things. Perhaps….

I love how swamped she looks in it. It reminds me of when I’m wearing dresses like that and how I adore that feeling of being swamped in fabric, so many things are so very skimpily made nowadays that properly billowing sleeves are something of a novelty.

It got me thinking of alternative Ossies. Because she’s really only wearing a ‘Model T Ford’ one. Plain black, buttoned front, billowing sleeves, puppy-ear collar. It’s a divine frock, but it was vanilla essence in fabric form really. I love getting one in to sell, I even love them when they’ve been shortened because they’re so plain I really can’t criticise someone for wanting to make it ‘their own’. They are the perfect vintage wardrobe basic.

But sometimes I come across Ossies in old magazines which you would just never have credited to him in a million years. Not because of any design deficiency, quite the opposite. They’re just not the convention. No Celia print in sight. No billowing sleeves or puppy ear collar.

I’m not even talking about the early pieces. The panelled mod gear, or even the frilly satin minis. I’m seeing it throughout the Seventies, when anyone might think he was surgically attached to rolls of moss crepe and silk chiffon.

He was a master tailor, and very innovative. As were so many designers. But when you become known for ‘a look’, it’s rather difficult to move away from that – or at least, harder to sell. So here are a handful I can place right now, but I will certainly post some more if I ever find them. I’ve not even seen anything remotely like these turn up in reality. If they did, would anyone believe they were Ossies?