The challenge is how to dress up without grandstanding. A nice blouse is just the thing

This is not a white shirt. It is a cream blouse. Big difference. A crisp white shirt is no good to anyone – not for the next week, anyway. Your white shirt can stay in the ironing pile until 2019, when it will be just the thing to get you in the back-to-work zone. Until then, you don’t need a shirt. What you need, instead, is a blouse.

A blouse is the feminine version of a shirt. So, obviously, it has a lower profile and less puffed-up status, but works just as hard, as well as being prettier. Joking! Well, kinda. Anyway. This blouse is mine, and came from & Other Stories a year or so ago. It is as useful as any white shirt, because a shot of cream lace prettifies anything you put it with, from a pair of jeans to – today – a vintage pencil skirt.

My go-to look for the days around Christmas is what I think of as Matinee Glamour. As in, imagine you’re going to see, say, The Nutcracker somewhere posh at 2.30pm. Black velvet and cream lace, silks and ribbons, pearls. Perhaps a pair of polka-dot tights and a ballet pump.

At a matinee, it is light when you arrive and pitch black when you come out. But then, day and night seem to blend into one at this time of year. When you are at home, the daylight hours are so short that one minute you are still eating breakfast, then the next time you look out the window, the streetlamps are on. And when you are drinking prosecco by 11am and have watched two films by mid-afternoon, it all starts to blend into one. So clothes that span the day-to-night gap fit best.

A nice blouse is just the thing. The challenge of festive dressing is how to dress up without grandstanding. You are dressing for twinkling tree lights, not for the spotlight.

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For the next week there is no call for tight dresses or teetering platform heels or statement neons. There may be some days that – if you are lucky – call for nothing more than your favourite pyjamas. But there will be other days that require a little more effort, not just because there will be photographs taken, but because dressing up is part of getting into the spirit of Christmas.

A posh blouse and a nice skirt have the requisite box-of-chocolate-on-the-lap Matinee Glamour vibes. But that’s just me, and my wardrobe. A novelty jumper and a cracker hat? Fabulous. There is no right or wrong way to do this. The only real must-have? The chocolates, obviously.

• Jess wears skirt, £20, rokit.co.uk. Heels, £95, office.co.uk. Lace shirt, Jess’s own. Styling: Melanie Wilkinson. Hair and makeup: Samantha Cooper at Carol Hayes Management

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