Somebody, somewhere once said that if you stand still long enough, you will come back around into fashion again.

At 52, I like to think I have never been truly banished from the realms of the stylish — but I have felt pretty marginalised in recent times. When the buzz is all about what’s being worn by Paula Yates’s daughters Peaches and Pixie or the Olsen twins, Mary-Kate and Ashley, the fact that I have children (and quite a few items of clothing) older than most of that lot makes me feel well and truly out of the loop.

So, hurrah for Michelle Obama. And hurrah for Sarah Palin, come to that. Both women are 44, and the fact that they managed to look chic, sexy and fashionable on the campaign trail has given me the validation I needed to declare women over 40 to be the new style icons. Once you look around, you see them everywhere. Reaching her late 40s has given Kristin Scott Thomas the most fabulously sexy-chic bloom. She used to look a bit prim; now she is dressed in the best bits of YSL.

Mary Portas from British TV’s Mary Queen of Shops fashion programme is 46 and models her own quirky/strict style that never looks like anyone else’s.

Youth will always have a premium. Firm, soft, perfect skin, a gazelle-like body - these are wonderful things. But they are not the only way to be beautiful. I came upon a recent picture of Deborah Harry on a celebrity website — “God, hasn’t she aged since backstage at the Whisky in 1977!” cracked the photographer. And of course she has. She is no longer the same New Wave babe in her black shift with peroxide blonde hair. But 31 years later, she is a different kind of babe.

I did have a sexy little fashion moment in London yesterday, though. Popping out to get a sandwich in Soho, my eyes locked with 60s heartthrob Terence Stamp across Broadwick Street.

He ran his steely blue eyes down my well-wrapped-up body to the fabulous

flat patent boots I was wearing, then looked me full in the face and smiled. It was bliss. When I did the same thing to him, though, I discovered he was wearing purple Crocs. Perhaps it is our male contemporaries who need to learn to grow old gracefully.