My husband can dress himself - once I've chosen the clothes Take my husband. On second thoughts, please don't, because I'm not sure I could find another one. Besides, I've put years of hard work into him - and let me tell you, the vast bulk of that work has been sartorial. In the process I have become the dowdy peahen to my spouse's gaudy peacock. I have grown accustomed to being upstaged by his fabulous shirts, sourced by me, which elegantly straddle the line between achingly trendy stand-up comedian and achingly trendy gay stand-up comedian. I hope. There are metrosexual Liberty prints and a kaleidoscope of sky blue butterflies, psychedelic Paisleys, rampantly rococo florals, and a particularly fabulous candy pink show-stopper from Boden. But do you really think he came that way? That he was an off-the-peg dandy who happened to be straight and single? And fancy me? Ladies, ladies you know better than that. Only the lucky few (OK, just Victoria Beckham) land one of those. The rest of us must do the best we can with the very basic ingredients we are given. Forget career and children; could there be any challenge more worthwhile than transforming a man who dresses like a Christian engineering student on his way to the overseas disco into a Converse-and-G-Star-Raw Jude Law-alike? Looking back, my husband's key crime against fashion was stubborn conservatism, rather than blatant poor taste. On our first date, he wore a black shirt, which was, I generously felt, an interesting look. Except, as it emerged on our subsequent dates, it was his only look. He appeared to have an endless number of them, each more funereal than the last. There were relatively skittish forays into deepest aubergine and, once, sage green, but they were all too infrequent. It took eight years of nagging and pleading, House of Fraser gift vouchers and abortive shopping trips before I finally persuaded him to try on a (dark) checked shirt. He wasn't sure. I mean, what might people think? Would they think he was some sort of crazed, extrovert, look-at-me checked shirt person? Which he obviously wasn't. And then, suddenly, he was. Very soon the fearless fashionisto I had created was dabbling with Ben Sherman and hanging with Ted Baker. Fifteen years on, he is in his mighty prime, a man for whom lilac holds no fear and rambling roses are par for the course. I would like to state for the record that I don't lay out his clothes every day; that would be weird and controlling. But then, I don't have to; given that I chose them, it would be well nigh impossible for him to go wrong. Sisters, my work is done. And does he feel emasculated? As every veteran couple knows, the secret to a happy marriage is ensuring the man wears the trousers. As long as it's the woman who bought them.