Jackie May: Did you know that this season, fashion has seen a move towards "subtlety and refinement".

I didn't - not until I read last month's fashion news in Vogue. Buying a Vogue occasionally is an attempt (unsuccessful) to find that elusive style so necessary, some say, for one's adult life.

Lisa Armstrong, writing in this

84-year-old fashion bible, says the move to refinement is what happens when a group of, mostly women, designers come of age - that is to say they have reached their fourth decade.

She's talking about Stella McCartney, Hannah Gibbon and Phoebe Philo, who have played with garish and rock chic looks, but now that they are settled into their lives, their looks and designs are all - elegantly - grown up.

Good for them, I'd like to say that with sincere generosity. But deep down I feel truly rotten. I too have come of that age, and there's nothing elegantly grown up about me. "Crazy" is what I've most recently been labelled. Nothing refined about crazy is there?

It might have nothing to do with the way I dress - too boring really - but there is something crazy, I admit, about opening a cupboard full of clothes and finding nothing to wear.

This is my daily response to getting dressed in the morning.

And there is certainly something a little crazy about two of my friends and their sartorial habits. One, I've just discovered, hasn't bought anything new in five years. I wouldn't have guessed if she hadn't told me. The other was dithering over lunch about whether she should buy a particular dress or not. The dress cost what I spend on my family's grocery bill for a month. Crazy? Must be.

After much thought I've rationalised my morning behaviour to myself and to my husband. My children don't need an explanation. They love the time in and about my cupboard offering me shoes and clothes to wear.

The reason, I feel, for my indecision is a deep desire to get back into bed to avoid for as long as I can the grown-up-ness of my life at 40-plus.