The great leggings debate...

TRAGICALLY I still associate flying with glamour. Pathetic I know but what else is there to do but dream as you shuffle miserably through security, take off your shoes and submit to a full body scan?

What else but to dream of a time when you dressed up to fly, when the pinnacle of the in-flight catering wasn’t an overpriced, tongue-scalding cheese toastie in cellophane but a three-course dinner with silver service and linen napkins, served to you by solicitous stewardesses who treated you like a cherished invalid?

What else to do but recall a time when there was so much leg-room you could put your seat back without beheading the person behind you; when there were bottles of eau de cologne in the toilettes; and children were invited to go and sit with the captain in the cockpit?

Which is why I felt a flicker of sympathy for United, the airline that bans leggings. That is, it bans them if they’re worn by people who IN terms of female beauty you really can’t improve on this photograph of Claudia Cardinale joyously dancing barefoot on a Roman roof terrace in 1959. No wonder it’s used for a poster advertising this year’s Cannes Film festival.

Except they’ve airbrushed her a couple of dress sizes skinnier. Clearly the graphic designer hadn’t heard the phrase: “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” are getting heavily discounted tickets because they’re related to United employees. A couple of youngsters with these tickets (known as “pass riders”) were barred from their flights between Denver and Minneapolis and some earwigging busybody began tweeting her indignation.

A furious model called Chrissy Teigen took up the cause. “I have flown United before with literally no pants on. Just a top as a dress,” she told the world. I’ve heard of flying by the seat of your pants, but no pants at all? That’s not nice.

The United Airlines dress code also takes a dim view of pass riders in miniskirts, midriffs, short shorts and “form-fitting lycra/spandex tops, pants and dresses”.

This all sounds ridiculous when you consider that back in the Mad Men days of the 1960s some airlines kitted out their hostesses (very much trolley dollies then rather than “flight attendants”) in hipster hotpants and kinky boots.

But then there are mini skirts and there are mini skirts, just as there are midriffs you want to show off and midriffs which are better concealed. And leggings… I’m used to leggings now but they’re not particularly flattering or glamorous are they?

They’re comfortable, forgiving and useful but they’re not what you pick to wear if you want to rock your “international woman of mystery” look for a budget flight from Stansted – which obviously I always do. Why unleash wrinkly bottoms and thunder thighs when you can wear something beautifully cut in navy and a pair of eff-orf sunglasses which (you never know) could get you an upgrade. Regrettably though, even celebrities in business and first class have given up couture when flying and now dress like us rather than Audrey Hepburn in 1966 or Amal Clooney on her way to work.

United Airlines is a voice crying in the wilderness, making a lastditch stand against leggings in a world where grudging smart casual is the best you can hope for. And they only have themselves to blame. Airlines treat us all like downtrodden peasants now. So that, I’m afraid, is why we dress accordingly.