authenticguccishoes

IT could be my imagination. But I swear that since Christine Lagarde came to prominence, Theresa May has upped her game. Not in political terms, necessarily. But I've noticed her embracing the grey in her hair, streamlining the tailoring, and sidelining the leather jackets and spiky shoes that were just that little bit too young for her.

What the Home Secretary chooses for her wardrobe obviously has nothing to do with me, and it won't make any difference to her policies. But it's good to see a high-flying fiftysomething woman confident in her own skin, especially in Britain. Because for far too long this particular gender, at this particular age, in this particular country, has been more or less invisible to the public eye.

So it has taken the appointment of an especially stylish and charismatic Frenchwoman to head the IMF to make us step back and think about it. And yes, I know it is shallow to judge someone on the way they look. But the age we live in is as visual as the Middle Ages (no pun intended), when the vast majority of the population couldn't read, so had to rely on pictures to tell them stories. There is probably something deep to say here related to falling educational standards and our obsession with celebrity, but let's not get distracted.

What is indisputable is that Lagarde is no desperate ingénue. She is a smart woman of 55 who celebrates the fact that sometimes, being female in a tough situation can be a bonus, not a hindrance, and talks openly about her “feminine and understated” negotiating style.

She even has the courage to blame the blokes for our international financial ills; pointing the finger at testosterone-fuelled bankers for the financial crash and tutting that the euro never had a good start because of its, “founding fathers… founding fathers, not mothers, notice. Regrettably, there was no woman at the table at the time.”

It is reductive to argue that we don't have women like Lagarde in British politics or public life, because if you look closely, we do, or we certainly have the potential to produce them. It's just that all too often, they are sidelined, pilloried, or never put themselves forward for high office.