Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No. It’s just me walking down Republic Street sporting the latest fashion fad: a nice meaty pair of shoulder pads. Please excuse me while I practise my new crab-like strut, handy for entering and exiting doorways sideways.

I wrote ‘fad’ but, worryingly enough, big shoulders are suddenly on everything, from jackets to dresses to cardigans and T-shirts. It seems to be more than a craze, judging from the catwalks and the high street racks. Nope, the return of the shoulder pads looks about to hit with a vengeance: this winter we’re not going to be able to move for large shoulders.

I’m still in shock. What happened? It seems only yesterday I was looking at photos of my early teens with disbelief and shame (really, they’re photos of just the shoulder pads, with my face lurking somewhere vaguely and minutely in between). Since when have we forgiven these, er, shoulder enhancers, and started re-garding them with fond indulgence?

My granny is a loyal fan of the (discreet) shoulder pad. She says shoulder pads make your waist and hips look smaller, your posture more upright and the spine looks straighter. So will I now start going clothes shopping with my gran?

Ah. No, chorus my fashion conscious friends: the new-generation shoulder pads come under a slight but crucially different guise. Oh no, they are definitely not the shoulder pads of yore. This time they cup the shoulders like a cresting wave and – please note – make the arms look model-skinny.

Of all things. My arms are my weak spot. If they look any skinnier than they already are, they’ll be thought of as school rulers.

But I suppose there’s not much we can do, is there? This look is power with a capital POW! it was declared after the London Fashion Week. “Clock the pulling in of the stomach, the bracing of the shoulders, the sway of the hips. This is about dressing to look sexy,” said Lisa Armstrong, fashion correspondent of The Times of London.

Strangely, shoulder pads so wide they almost constitute the whole of the Air Malta fleet are not something which exactly make me feel sexy.

Plus I keep getting flashbacks of Joan Collins – bless her – in the 1980s television series Dynasty, to be more precise. To be honest, I don’t remember the gist of the series except for Collins and her, er, dramatic couture (although I do seem to vaguely remember Sunday pulpit preachings about Dynasty and Dallas being ‘sinful and works of the devil’).

The only common thing I can see between then and now is the not-so-grand economy. Fashion journalist Ann Marie Hourihane says that the shoulder pad is flying back into our lives at a crucial moment: “The shoulder pad is a sign of war. Back when things were booming and prosperous in our economy, women were wearing floaty dresses.

“Cleavage is now going undercover. The shoulder pad is a symptom of a culture’s willingness to work when work is scarce.”

So we’re turning from floating fairies to feisty fighters? Yes, we want to assure society: we’ll fight them on the beaches and we’ll fight them… hang on… who are we meant to fight? The bad bankers? The greedy investors? The job centres?

I somehow get the nagging feeling that it’s power dressing at a time when there’s really no power on the market to take over.

Or perhaps it’s just a slow reawakening of the feminist cause. We’re going back to the ‘Shoulder to Shoulder’ anthem of the suffragettes. You know how it goes: shoulders are there to lean on, cry on and to make us look less fragile.

So maybe, after years of revealing clothes that gave us the vulnerable look, this is an attempt to give us the psychological shield to weather the next few years. Hence the switch of emphasis from breasts to shoulders, from undressing to armour.

Whether the shoulder pads will boost the economy as much as they boost the shoulders remains to be seen. My only consolation is that at least the grunge look is also back. Ah. The bliss of the slept-in make-up and tousled bed-hair look. It can so easily be achieved by, well, simply rolling out of bed… after having used those revived shoulder pads as pillows.

krischetcuti@gmail.com