The Christmas party season gets a bad press on the style pages, and not without good reason. As a religious festival, as a commercial opportunity or as a chance to drink one’s own body weight in spiced wine while treating the boss to a few pointed “home truths” about the way the business is run, clearly the holiday period has much to recommend it. But it’s hardly what you’d call a triumph of good taste.

All that tacky tinsel, all those gaudy baubles. All that forest green and fire-engine red. All those simpering fairy-lights and despairing trees. All that cheap sentimentality and expensive kitsch. And, oh, my dears, the noise! The people! And the menswear!

It’s not just the jolly festive jumpers (although it is those, too — the scene from Bridget Jones in which poor Colin Firth is forced into a knitted reindeer sweater continues to haunt the dreams of men’s style watchers 14 years on). It’s not even the sight of normally mild-mannered middle managers leading conga lines through the office while wearing novelty Santa hats.