Rock chic, yes. Rock chick, no

Certain things have a way of making you feel your age: the realisation that the first lady is your peer, the discovery that several people on the Forbes rich list are younger than you, and biopics made about rock stars whom you remember from when they actually were cheap rings stars.

Joan Jett, who reappeared on the pop culture radar last week thanks to the opening of The Runaways , was more of an icon of mine from her "I Love Rock 'n' Roll" Blackhearts days of 1982 than from the later "Cherry Bomb" era in the film, but still - the shag haircut, dark eye make-up, and leather is inked indelibly into my fashion past. So much so that when I first moved to London I embarrassed myself by (mistakenly) getting a Joan Jett haircut and crying to the stylist in horror, "But you've given me a shag!" Ahem.

In truth, it's never been a look I have sought to emulate; more one that I admired from afar (the closest I came to punk as a teenager were skull earrings and black nail polish).

Which is why, earlier this month, I was surprised to find myself during the Paris fashion shows staring at the leather leggings on Gareth Pugh's catwalk and the tunics at Rick Owens' show. I was equally surprised to experience a desire, after viewing Ann Demeulemeester's collection of warrior queen-wear, to run out and buy some bias-cut floor-length noir-ish skirts. And I consciously had to force myself to stop fondling the leather high-tops with embossed skulls at Lucien Pellat-Finet's showroom. The combination of The Runaways and a tougher global economy producing tougher fashion means the Jett aesthetic is returning to the high street.

But then, as The Runaways demonstrates quite graphically, some things that are appealing are not very good for you (even if you haven't seen the film, you can guess what these are). The question is whether or not punk-inspired fashion falls into this category - at least for the happily settled, professional, grown-up, family woman.

Is the desire for leather leggings and motorcycle boots in middle age a sign of latent mid-life crisis that will be glaringly obvious to everyone, or a natural reaction to the turn of the style cycle? There's a fine line between being embarrassed and being cool. But where, exactly, does it lie?

I ask Pellat-Finet, who says: "You know, I get people who come in who love the skulls, and they are everywhere between 16 and 60. It's really nothing to do with age."

Certainly, Rick Owens and everyone who works with him - many of them well into their forties - wear the full look with impunity. There are public figures, too, who have performed dramatic sartorial about-faces: architect Peter Marino, for example, who went cheap tiffany regulation suits to full-on biker leather about 12 years ago, and interior designer Nicky Haslam, who, during middle age, abandoned tweed for hair dyed not unlike Joan Jett's.

One female fashion editor I know was famous for wearing Ungaro (with all the ruches, frills and colour that implies). But after her divorce she started wearing leather leggings and lots of black eyeliner, and was generally regarded by the male population as totally hot. Who wouldn't want those adjectives attached to themselves?

Besides, whatever Pellat-Finet says, the age of the person wearing the clothes does make a difference: what looks like rebellion on a teenager seems like armour on a grown woman. You can wear leather because you have earned it. The clothes that are part of the current fashion moment are for women who don't really suffer fools. They can't; they have to get to the supermarket the board meeting, or whatever is next on the agenda. It's highly efficient to have all this . . . efficiency conveyed by dress. Or is that wishful thinking?

When it comes to this sort of fashion, as with everything else in a woman's life, you can have it all - but not at the same time. Get the Tao motorcycle boots with the ropes and ropes of studs, but don't wear them with the leather trousers; wear them with the flowing dress, the way retailer Ikram Goldman did during the Paris shows (the time spent waiting around for fashion shows to start is time best spent gathering wardrobe intelligence). Wear a Rick Owens jacket with, well, anything except more leather. That's just asking for fetish jokes.

At a recent dinner one guest was wearing hers with a super-girly Alice Temperley dress, and it looked great. If you want to wear leather leggings, pair them with one of Dries van Noten's terrific patchwork jackets or Celine's starched man's white shirts or Malo's thick ribbed jumpers.

Punk was a visual and aural rebellion against the establishment, and once the establishment has co-opted the accoutrements of the genre, then to break them down and use them as you see fit is the mature version of a counter-revolt. That's what I tell myself anyway. Though I am not sure silver bracelets Ms Jett, who appeared at the premiere of The Runaways in midriff-baring leather vest, leather trousers, and heavy black eyeliner, would see it like that.

Vanessa Friedman is the FT's fashion editor. She interviews Rick Owens in this week's How to Spend It magazine

Credit: By Vanessa Friedman