Rosé has gone from being the third colour on the wine list to the default choice from May to September. It is summer, distilled into an oversized glass. I write this knowing absolutely nothing whatsoever about wine, but I don’t think that matters because the point of rosé is that it is wine for people who don’t know their way around a wine list. To choose a white or a red wine you need to know about grapes and vineyards and climates. To choose a rosé, you just ask for the palest one they’ve got, right?

A wine you choose by the colour is a lifestyle choice, not a oenological one. Rosé pink – the liquid kind, not the flower kind – is part of our summer aesthetic. So it makes perfect sense that not only do we drink rosé in the summer, we also dress to match. Rose is nothing new, as a summer colour – we were wearing rose dresses back when a rose was something you grew in a flowerbed rather than poured from a bottle of Whispering Angel – but it’s a bit cooler now that it’s what millennials drink on their balconies rather than what baby boomers grow in their gardens.

Choosing rose to wear, just like choosing rosé to drink, depends on getting the shade just right. Too lurid a pink translates as too sugary a taste. This is true on the eye, as well as on the tongue. The shade you want is in the region of the subtle blush that you would drink over a long lunch under the shade of a tree in, say, Provence, as opposed to the diluted-Ribena shade you find on the shelves of a basic off-licence for £6.99. Or, if you prefer to think in petals, the colour of a charming old rose from a David Austin catalogue rather than the toxic pink of forecourt flowers.

I have worn a lot of pink over this summer’s heatwave. I think this is because I am wearing longer, looser clothes than I used to in hot weather. It’s not a modesty thing, or even an age thing, or at least not consciously; I just find that these days I feel more comfortable, less exposed, better able to take the heat in my stride, when I’ve got a long hemline and a floaty sleeve. But floor-length black looks slightly alarming for daytime; white is a bit ghostly; yellow is hard work. Rose, on the other hand, works well when there’s lots of it. Just like rosé, then. Make mine a large one.

• Jess wears blazer, £42, next.co.uk. Floral top, £39.99, and skirt, £49.99, both zara.com. Mules, £149, kurtgeiger.com

Styling: Melanie Wilkinson. Hair and makeup: Johanni Nel at S Management.

This article was amended on 4 August 2018 to correct the details of Jess Cartner-Morley’s outfit.