Olivia McLearon, a freelance writer from south east London, tells us why she couldn't be happier that flared jeans are making a comeback.

Finally, skinny jeans face a credible pretender to the fashion throne and I for one am delighted. No more convincing myself that my thighs don’t look like Wall’s sausages squeezed into denim. Now shops are full of dark flared jeans and, having slipped these beauties on, my thighs — though never likely to earn the epithet 'gazelle-like' — are no longer of the thunder variety.

But, what’s this? Fashion editors are complaining that they don’t look right and refusing to banish their skinnies to the off-limits area of the wardrobe. Fine, ladies, keep your skinny jeans — but please, please, please don’t use your considerable influence to let this pear-shaped mortal feel like they’re the only option. And don't utter the word 'bootcut' either; it just feels a bit too Rachel Stevens (although fair play to her, she knew it was a style that suited her and stuck to it).

Skinnies can’t rule the roost forever — an alternative can live beside them in beautifully stitched harmony. Bootcuts were cruelly shoved to the sidelines when Kate Moss and the like adopted skinny jeans in the early to mid noughties. They trickled their way down the fashion food chain so that now even my friend’s seven year old twins both wear them. The boyfriend jean tried to topple the skinny, but completely failed to capture the public’s imagination. Can the flare do it?

Bye Bye Skinny Jeans?