If you are female and reading this then, right now, there is probably at least a tiny part of you that is already lusting after a pair of Isabel Marant cropped red leather trousers. No matter that you can't afford them (they retail at around £1,500). Never mind, also, that you couldn't get hold of a pair even if you had the cash (most sizes are sold out on Net-a-Porter.com, and Matches has a waiting list). Never mind the disparity between how you might look in them and how Kate Moss looks in the advert, or the fact that even if you managed to get hold of them and get into them, you might struggle to find a suitable moment to wear them. Leather trousers are the look of the moment. It might be a moment of madness, but it's a moment nonetheless.
Last week, Victoria Beckham was photographed in the red Marant trousers, while Gemma Arterton was snapped in the black version. In the video for Country Strong, the single from her upcoming film, Gwyneth Paltrow is wearing Marant leather trousers with a silky grey Monroe tank and Stella McCartney stilettos. Halle Berry has been spotted in a charcoal grey pair of leathers; Elle Macpherson wears a red pair on the school run. Kate Moss, inevitably, was first, having worn a Balmain pair of luxe motorcycle-style leather trousers this year and last.
Leather trousers can never be just about fashion. There is, as Vernon delicately puts it, "a duality in the way men and women respond to them. To women it's a fashion thing, but to men they are flagrantly sexual." Buttolph agrees. "Well, my boyfriend really likes them. Really, really likes them," she tells me when I ask how people react to the look. But leather trousers are not just risque, they are risky as well. "There is a mutton dressed as lamb issue," says Buttolph. Vernon admits she was "tentative at first, because I was worried about looking a bit 90s supermodel turned mum".
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