EXTR AOR D INARY

SARAH JESSICA PARKER ( left) loves an excuse to dress up. Give her a red carpet and she’ll give you a veritable extravaganza of outré glamour.

So, imagine our surprise when SJP turned up at the Tribeca Film Festival last week not in cascades of tulle or with plumes of feathers in her hair, but in a grey shirt and blue jeans, with a backpack slung over her shoulder. And not a fashion backpack either, but a proper, practical, mum-on-the-school-run backpack. It was a look that was surprising in its normality, and one which begs the question: is ordinary the new extraordinary?

Instagram has made show-offs out of us all. In the clamour to be noticed, the trickledown effect of look-at-me clothes, hype pieces and status labels has permeated even the most unassuming of wardrobes. Whether you engage directly or not, chances are social media has affected how you get dressed.

Now, however, there’s a kickback taking place, and a tangible desire for designs that are distinctive, somewhat ironically, for their ordinariness. Isn’t this just more

Sweater, £195, Vince (net-a-porter.com) normcore? Not at all. Those deliberately uncool clothes, championed by the likes of Vetements, trumpeted their irony-laden ordinariness as a gimmick; these are clothes which genuinely take a backseat to their wearer.

And therein lies the appeal. By adopting an inconspicuous uniform, one resonates an air of confidence (see the Olsen twins, who exude untouchable cool in their refusal to be shaken by trends). Or take Sienna Miller ( left), a woman repeatedly celebrated as a beacon of cool bohemianism, who took to the stage for a Time’s Up discussion (also at the Tribeca Film Festival), in a biscuit-hued jumper and jeans. Did she look nice? Of course. Was her look noteworthy? Not particularly. ‘Listen to me,’ these clothes say, rather than, ‘Look at me! Õ.

Hitting pause on bells-and-whistles designs doesn’t mean opting out of fashion, however. Done well, the new normal clothes are still stylish – it’s just a case of knowing where to look: Sunspel for perfect tees, Uniqlo for essential outerwear, and Matchesfashion.com’s in-house label Raey, the fashion girl’s go-to, for great knits and jeans. Consider too the rebooted American Apparel, back in our lives and wardrobes (finally!) after a two-year hiatus with its universally appealing hoodies, tees and trackpants.

So will we see SJP in a pair of trackies on the Met Ball red carpet next week? Unlikely – but we’d salute her if she did. After all, ordinary clothes have never looked so interesting.

Trainers, £90, Geox ( geox.com) Rucksack, £99, Arket (arket.com) Tee, £65, Sunspel (sunspel.com) Jumper, £195, Raey (matchesfashion.com) (boden.co.uk) (rains.com) ( petit-bateau.co.uk)

SOMEWHERE, crumpled up inside a dusty cupboard at Conservative Party HQ, is a memo. A memo that Sajid Javid hadn’t read. So when the new Home Secretary was asked to pose for a photo on his first day in the job, he immediately spread his legs wide and thrust his chest out towards the camera. Sajid caught sight of his reflection in the glass door and nodded approvingly. He had it. Oh yes. He had the power. What he failed to appreciate was, in that moment, he only possessed the power to make himself look like a total loser.

The memo Sajid had missed was the one dated circa 2016 saying, ‘On no account allow yourself to be photographed as if you were auditioning to be a Superman doll.’ It was a lesson that had been hard-learned. The first to try it out had been George Osborne at the Tory Party conference, when he’d ended his speech by walking to the front of the stage, then forcing his legs wide apart. Unfortunately, the then Chancellor left his toes pointing inwards, turning him into a dead ringer for a metrosexual Alan Partridge. Not quite the image he wanted to impart.

Even so, just a day later Theresa May adopted an almost identical pose during her conference speech, hoping to look like a Home Secretary who wasn’t afraid to deport anyone who crossed her, but ended up almost falling over. You’d have thought that would have been enough to have led the Tories to ditch the experiment. But not a bit of it. Michael Gove was snapped backstage practising his own power pose, while, the following year, David Cameron repeatedly tried to make up for his inner uselessness during the referendum campaign by keeping his legs abnormally wide apart. He hoped he looked like a hitman in a gangster movie, but merely confirmed everyone’s opinion that he was a posh boy out of his depth.

We had thought the Tory power pose had died with Dave. Not least because research that had found that standing like Cristiano Ronaldo about to take a free kick makes people look powerful had been proven to be entirely bogus. Nothing shouts ‘I’m completely out of my depth’ more than someone hamfistedly trying to act tough. Especially when that someone is a politician. Most people struggle to believe a word politicians say even when they’re telling the truth; when their body language makes it plain they’re lying they lose all credibility. As well as looking utterly ridiculous. Macho and politics just don’t mix.

Everyone knows politicians are basically geeks with unresolved narcissistic fantasies. Quite why Sajid indulged his last week, only he can truly know. And he’s as sure as hell been regretting it big time ever since. On the plus side, he’s been a lesson to us all. If you want to be seen as powerful and confident, it’s always a good start to try looking normal.