Of course, not having an explicit uniform code doesn’t negate the fact that there are unofficial rules that have governed what women feel they have to wear. During the 1960s, at a time when professional women started to want to get back into the workplace after raising children, women’s organisations raised the issue of the time and money these women would need to spend on their appearance. The prospect of investing in a work wardrobe as well as regular beauty salon trips became a real consideration in calculating whether it was actually worth their while to get back into the workplace.

Fast forward to today, and while a commitment to manicures and blowdrys doesn’t feature in the vast majority of women’s ability to work, author and comedian Viv Groskop points out that the conscious effort of caring about what you look like highlights the contradictions and limits of feminism.

On the one hand, most women have the freedom to choose to wear whatever they want at work, Groskop says. “[However], these things don’t quite add up because we clash with reality – and the reality is that people will judge you [for what you are wearing].”

Uma Creswell, businesswoman and vice president of City Women Network, is a veteran of the corporate world, having worked in the banking sector since the mid-90s. Working on a trading floor staffed with wall-to-wall men, she says you needed to dress a certain way to have credibility.

“It was very formal,” she says. “A very command-and-control culture. Trousers were frowned upon… it was always suits for men and women, there were no dress-down days – it was just unheard of… I wouldn’t have fitted in if I didn’t conform and I wouldn’t have been taken seriously.”

With the introduction of flexible working and the dressed-down world of start-ups, the working world is a lot more casual now she says, but the banking sector is still pretty formal. “Women are still expected to dress in a certain way, and I think that says a lot about the fact that we have come some way, but there’s still a certain standard in certain roles.”

And first impressions, she says, still matter a great deal.

“I’ve hired hundreds of people in my city career and I have to admit there’s been unconscious biases there. I have looked at people and – within the first three seconds thought, ‘Have you actually thought about what you’re wearing? Because you’re trying to get a job’.”