United we stand – in dungarees, of course

Down with climate change! Listen – and heed – Emma Thompson’s dire warning on
global warming!

There now, how’s that? Having satisfied everyone’s environmental conscience,
let’s tackle the other burning (but, let me stress, not fossil-fuel) issue
at the heart of the People’s Climate March in London at the weekend.

Dungarees. Emma’s dungarees. The fact of them. The politics of them. The
mother-daughter matchy-matchiness of them.

Make no mistake, Oscar-winner Thompson looked pretty darn hot in hers. As hot
as anyone over the age of 20 could. If not a little hotter. I swear that
wasn’t the scent of an autumn bonfire as she swept through central London;
it was high passion. If not high fashion.

At 55, the writer, actress and campaigner is rolling back her mileage faster
than a horseshoe magnet on an old-school odometer.

She’s foxy, expensively highlighted and not just dressed for it but, judging
by her toned upper arms, fit enough to scale the walls of Greenham Common
airbase without breaking a fingernail, never mind a sweat.

Fresh from airing her sound-as-a-United-Kingdom-pound pensées on the Scottish
referendum (“Who would want to build new borders between human beings in an
ever-shrinking world?”), Thompson is voicing her urgent concern about the
fate of that world.

Her engagement is not without precedent. La Thompson, who is married to the
irresistible actor and accomplished carpenter Greg Wise, 48 (whom she met on
the set of Sense and Sensibility in the wake of her break-up with first
husband Kenneth Branagh), named her daughter Gaia, the primal Greek mother
goddess who embodies the concept of the earth in harmony with itself.

Subsequently, the Gaia hypothesis has come to mean the ”biogeochemistry at
the heart of systems ecology’’, and indeed these may well be the child’s
middle names, as we all know how fabulously wordy actressy types can be.

However, back to statements of a sartorial nature. Famously having taken off
her shoes to accept a Best Actress award at an American ceremony in January
(the equivalent of removing your flak jacket in Crimea), Thompson has
demonstrated a mischievous disregard for red carpet mores. She went one
better at the Golden Globes, when she went on stage to present the
prestigious Best Screenplay gong, lobbing her Louboutin heels behind her
head, complaining that they were so cruel on her feet that their trademark
scarlet soles were red with her blood, not lacquer.

It was a moment of high comedy; although she carried her martini and acted as
though she were squiffy, the consensus was that she was simply playing for
it laughs.

And the much-loved actress is nothing if not a consummate performer, who can
read an audience. After a career in the spotlight, she obviously grasps the
significance of mode à clef and knows that anything – everything – an
A-lister wears will be subject to a degree of interpretation. Hence the
choice of dungarees for a demo.

Dungarees are not worn to flatter, not least because they make grown women
look fatter. But they signal zeal and seriousness.

In my early teens, Dexys Midnight Runners dungarees were the dernier cri in
cutting-edge chic. I bought mine from a jumble sale; it was a man’s
cast-off, so I rolled up the legs and cinched in the waist with a leather
belt and… ta-dah! I looked ridiculous.

But it was all about attitude, which, obviously, any 5ft 1in convent-educated
girl dressed as a ship’s mechanic has in spades.

As with so many similar garments – baggy sweatshirts, waterfall cardigans,
loose tunics – dungarees might feel as though they are a clever cover-up
that hides a multitude of sins. In fact, counterintuitively, they
mercilessly embellish every excess curve and contour. Once the preserve of
middle-aged gardeners and the pregnant (long-since abandoned once maternity
fashion got groovy), in recent years this traditional workwear has been
elevated to the unofficial uniform of supermodels and the unimpeachably
skinny.

Think waifs and superwaifs: Alexa Chung. Cara Delevingne, Heidi Klum and
Cressida Bonas. Keira Knightley famously rocks the dungarees look when she
wants to walk about unnoticed with her husband, Klaxons singer James Righton.

Tweenagers love them, too; my 12‑year-old has a pair of denim Primark dungaree
shorts, and teams them with her stout Dr Martens boots (darling, they really
do look prettier with pumps, I murmur, to no avail).

Not to be left out of the style stakes, the five-year-old’s are in sassy white
denim with a floral print. She accessorises them with wellies and a vest
top, presumably in preparation for Glastonbury 2030, when the blast from the
past will be Rihanna, the only woman who manages to make dungarees look
shamelessly sexy.

The idea that I might step out in (shameful rather than sexy) dungarees to
co-ordinate with either of my mini-me daughters is so beyond my imagining
that it’s more remote, even, than the prospect of wearing a onesie (though
note to self: Mary Berry has a onesie, so there’s still the chance for a
late flowering).

But Emma! Emma carries off her dungarees with glorious, enviable aplomb. The
resulting photographs aren’t a “look-at-me” exercise, more of a “look-at-us
and what we stand for” display of public solidarity.

Seeing a mother and daughter, two very different generations, united over
something they both care deeply about (the environment, not the dungarees)
is tremendously heartwarming. But, fortunately, not planet-warming.