It’s not often that my round – fashion – crosses over with my colleague Samantha Hutchinson’s. She is our national reporter, mainly covering politics. But when I recently confessed to her that after a year of declaring mesh flats an abomination I was ready to buy a pair, we had something of a lightbulb moment. This feeling I had, or rather a reversal of feeling, was not particular to my circumstances. We’ve all been there. So I wanted to know: was there a name for this phenomenon, where a trend, on first blush, seems absurd but over time becomes desirable?

Yes, she said, that’s the Overton window.