Only when everything that resembles ‘normal’ is tossed so far out of the window it’s in the recycling bin two roads over, do we crave the steady and the profoundly familiar. The things we so frequently took for granted now seem so precious and extraordinary. Like getting dressed.

I don’t know much about your ‘normal’ routine, but I’ll let you in on mine. It starts with a double-snoozed alarm. (Yes, I am that person.) I don’t actually sleep in the extra 12 minutes I’ve afforded myself but grumpily loll about flicking between Instagram, WhatsApp, emails and news bulletins. Begrudgingly, I heave off my duvet, switch my radio on to Country FM and officially begin my day. I shower, wash my face and brush my teeth with a kind of mindless muscle memory before finally engaging my brain and confronting the morning’s hardest task: getting dressed. (That’s a lie, the hardest task is finding matching socks but play along.)

Like many people, my getting dressed is underpinned by a uniform of sorts. On most days you’ll find me falling into one of two camps: skirt and sweatshirt or chuck-on dress – the physical core that binds them both is comfort (and elasticated waistbands). Lucky for me, designers and the high street have made this a focal point, too. That’s why the loose shapes and masculine cuts of Celine, under the considerate eye of Phoebe Philo, pulled in the sales and why Zara’s throw-on polka dot smock dress was so popular it had its own Instagram account last summer. So, on the surface this might sound like a simple getting dressed process, but let me assure you, it has more layers of complication than a mille-feuille.

Billie Bhatia: “There’s power in how we dress now”