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From Mary Portas to the Duchess of Cambridge, women are demanding more from their dresses – sleeves. And, hurrah, the shops are listening The most intriguing aspect of shopping guru Mary Portas's new clothes collection isn't that it has taken so long for someone to realise there is not much out there for women over the age of 40 who don't want to dress in varying shades of beige, but a range called "Armery" – hosiery to cover the arms. "No one has done it before and there might be a reason for that," said Portas in an interview over the weekend. "It's either brilliant or they have [done it before] and it hasn't worked. But I'm very excited about it." I am too – perhaps she will expand into arm warmers for winter? – but it has sharply drawn attention to the very serious issue of sleeves, or lack thereof. The sleeve revolution has been fomenting for a few years now. "There are no dresses with sleeves and we need to bring back the sleeve: fine, see-through ones, long or short," said Helen Mirren in 2008. "There are so many wonderful things you can do with sleeves that people used to do, and then they stopped." I'm not sure what the wonderful things you can do with sleeves were that she had in mind – maybe secreting snacks in them. I sometimes keep hankies up mine, even though most people stopped doing this after the war. Last year, Prima magazine, aimed at an older readership, started their Call to Arms campaign, lobbying retailers to stock more ranges with sleeves, meeting with buyers from Marks & Spencer, John Lewis and Next, who all promised to keep an eye on their sleeve quota. But it is a myth that only older women want to cover their arms. I don't ever remember a sleeve-free time, post-childhood, except for one week around six years ago when, pleasingly desiccated following a minor salmonella incident, my upper arms briefly resembled Michelle Obama's, had hers developed a light crust from long years of confinement. Sleeveless dresses or tops have had an insidious effect on many women. You become painfully aware of upper-arm flab, despite looking like a normal healthy woman (I have lost count of the number of changing rooms I have crawled out of after catching a glimpse of plump armflesh in a sleeveless dress under harsh lighting). You feel bad about never doing those arm exercises you once tore out of a glossy magazine. You have to remember to shave your armpits. You can't wear a decent, comfy bra with supportive straps because you have to wear one with stupid little strings that are designed to be on show. You are forced to buy something else – a cardigan or jacket, of if this were the 90s, a "shrug" – even though the retailer has already saved money by not stitching on a sleeve for you. And you get cold. So I only buy clothes with sleeves, but while Reiss and Whistles have occasionally been reliable sleeve purveyors, it has largely been a battle. Sometimes, I have fallen into the trap of the cap sleeve, which lulls you with its essence of sleeve (a rounded little wisp of fabric that hangs over the shoulder), yet finishes at precisely the worst part, mid upper arm at the widest point. It was while I was wearing a cap-sleeved dress that a man remarked I had "nurturing" arms, when clearly what I should have had were steely Madonna arms. I started buying vintage dresses, particularly those from the 50s with three-quarter-length sleeves, which are flattering and don't trail in your dinner, but then Mad Men came along and other people started snapping them up; Romola Garai's sleeviness in The Hour has only made it worse. Tops with good sleeves have always been a problem (I own vests, some even strappy and pretty, but these are strictly for insulation). When I have worn a sleeveless dress – though I can honestly only recall one occasion and that was as a bridesmaid – I have felt selfconscious and underdressed. What has been the alternative? I have amassed a collection of cardigans but nobody wants their signature style to be based on a collection of cardigans. A cropped blazer over sleeveless tops and dresses has served me well recently. In a talk at the Edinburgh book festival on Sunday night, Caitlin Moran said she loved the singer Adele, because she wore sleeves. In fact, Moran is a longtime covered-arm enthusiast. "Why are there no sleeves?" she wrote in the fashion section of her book How to Be a Woman. "If every woman in this country were allowed to cover her upper arms as God intended, prescriptions of Xanax would halve in a fortnight." She writes all this in capitals in a clear sleeve-based rage; I write in crushed resignation with a glimmer of cautious optimism. Because the sleeve issue may be getting some coverage. In the past couple of weeks, online shop Asos added a search button to refine choices not only by the very existence of sleeves, but length too. "There was talk about sleeve-length in social media communities so we added it in," says a spokesperson (this particular triumph was thanks to a plaintive tweet by Guardian columnist Sali Hughes). "We're an online retailer so we can be that responsive." The best thing the Duchess of Cambridge has done for women wasn't wearing that sleeved wedding dress (she had to – she was getting married to a royal in Westminster Abbey), but her succession of beautiful dresses on her trip to Canada, which suddenly made sleeves look interesting and desirable. You can already see this effect on the high street – Topshop has a good selection of vintage-inspired lace dresses with proper sleeves. It also has skintight "bodycon" dresses with long covered arms, proof that younger women want to wear sleeves too. This may just be a reaction to a previously chilly winter, but the new season's designer collection feature a hitherto unseen wealth of sleeves – Erdem's beautiful three-quarter-length lace sleeves on dresses, and wrist-length printed ones; Alexander McQueen's amazing range of sleeves from fluffy to billowy chiffon. This autumn, Miu Miu and Marni have gone in for a 40s look, with pretty – but grownup – dresses with cropped sleeves. It seems as if designers and retailers are waking up to the idea that actually giving women what they want might be a mutually beneficial deal. And what, other than hosiery for arms, could be more radical than that? Emine Saner
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