Back to school

This time three years ago, when I was starting Sixth Form, I was scouring H&M and Zara, trying on suit trousers and dreaming of my fantasy professional wardrobe, which, if I recall correctly, contained satchels, fitted suits, and gratuitous use of brooches. I wanted to transform myself into an 80s businesswoman carrying four phones a la Kate Beaton, or, on other days, a vintage art student. I had plans far grander than my old, boring school uniform.

Naturally, of course, my neat, pretty little skirt suits and my clicky kitten heels and my carefully-chosen jewellery devolved quickly into a uniform of holey tights, the same scruffy, paint-stained velvet blazer, and whichever pull-on dress I could dig, crumpled, out of my drawer. It is not easy to dress stylishly when you get up every morning, without fail, half an hour later than the absolute latest you should have been up.

Of course, now at university I don't have a dress code. I can rock up to lectures in pyjamas for all anyone cares (and indeed, it might come to that - I haven't become an early riser in the past three years). I still, however, love clothes that catch my imagination and make me feel like I have transformed myself. Here are some looks with blouses, pinafores, turtlenecks and brooches, to wear if you want to feel like a cross between a 70s secretary, an eccentric art teacher and the Queen.

Photos are taken in the garden by my mum, of course; it is back to school after all. (Disclaimer: the glasses are genuinely needed. See: middle photo in which I am squinting, blindly, at the camera, like a pinafore'd badger.)

Outfit 1: Shirt: charity shop, brooch: hand-me-down from my mum, skirt: charity shop, shoes: Deichmann

Outfit 2: Shirt: charity shop, pinafore: charity shop, brooch: my mum's, borrowed, shoes: hand-me-downs

Outfit 3: Top: New Look,  skirt: Topshop, cardigan: charity shop, brooch: car boot sale, shoes: Deichmann, as before