I’ve ditched my suits of armour says TV’S Wark

THE age of the power-dressing female news presenter is over, according to Kirsty Wark, who says career women no longer need a “shield of armour”.

The presenter of BBC Two’s Newsnight, pictured, said she no longer wore suits on screen.

“Gone are the days when you used to wear Armani shoulders. It was like a kind of shield of armour but I don’t have to do that any more,” Wark said.

“Life is no longer like that and I think women now are more comfortable.”

Wark interviewed Baroness Thatcher in 1990 wearing an Armani jacket with broad shoulder pads. A red Katharine Hamnett suit she wore in the Eighties was one of the exhibits in a Design Museum show dedicated to women and power, and she later said of it: “It’s a beautiful colour, but I could have carried the Eiffel Tower on my shoulders.”

But according to Isabel Spearman, an image consultant and once special adviser to Samantha Cameron, the former prime minister’s wife, the “power blazer” is back in fashion after being championed by Brigitte Macron, France’s “first lady”. Emily Maitlis, Wark’s fellow presenter, has also spoken about what she wears on the show, although her concerns are a little different. She said recently: “The hardest thing is sitting on a Newsnight chair because the camera, before you know it, has gone on the floor and it’s creeping up.

“It’s like those pap[arazzi] shots in the back of a cab where you never know if they’re going to get your knickers.”