Hadley Freeman can ease your fashion pain

Why do so many female models in shoots look as if they’re desperate for the loo? Or is it just fashionable to look fey and feeble?

Francesca, London

Francesca, London, come on down! You are the lucky winner of the world famous “Best question of the month, year, century in Ask Hadley”! You, my darling, win a year’s worth of Ugg Repelling Spray, preventing anyone who is wearing, has worn, or has even considered wearing, a pair of Ugg boots from breaking through the 50-yard radius around your person. Sterling work.

So to your query, and its focus on the popular knock-kneed pose adopted by models. Of course it is fashionable to look fey and feeble, because this suggests you do not eat much, which suggests you are thin, which suggests you can fit into Chanel sample-size clothes, which is the most important thing in the universe. And even if you can’t achieve this state of nirvana, if you pose in a manner that suggests feebleness – such as, say, folding your body in a pose that insinuates your bones have crumbled due to osteoporosis – you can fool onlookers into believing you are on the cusp of collapse. Malnutrition? Oh my God, like, such a good look.

Having spoken thus, one mustn’t rule out your suggestion involving overflowing bladders. Fashion shoots take an unfeasibly long time. I’m not entirely sure why it requires 17 hours to take four pictures of a model in some clothes, but let us accept that it does. One could understand if the photographer got a little grumpy. One could also understand if he then forbade loo visits – after all, if it takes four hours for a model to put on each outfit, imagine how long it would take her to go to the loo. And those photography studios charge by the hour, you know. That chick can wait until after we shoot the Versace – dammit, they’re advertisers, so we gotta get that outfit shot. OK, the risk of a small stomach bulge caused by the holding in of excess liquid is a definite risk but, hell, that’s what airbrushing is for.

Thus, Ms Francesca, I believe you now understand the inevitability of the knock-kneed pose and are, I hope, knocking your forehead against a wall at the foolishness of your inquiry and, even more importantly, knocking your knees together.

This question is somewhat belated, but now that Michael Jackson has died, am I no longer allowed to lust after the Jackson-inspired jacket by Balmain?

Cherie, London

Mrs Blair? Is that you? If so, can I just say that I think you’d look absolutely faaaaaaaabulous in a bit o’ Balmain. According to one magazine, the label’s look is “fucked-up rock chick” and I just really think we could work with that. Give up the Carole Caplin pastels, go for the Balmain fucked-upness. You are married to a rock god, after all.

Anyway, I am touched by your sense of decorum. It far exceeds that of the 10 billion celebrities who were so eager to proclaim their kinship to Jackson via the sacred medium of Twitter after he died yet, oddly, never mentioned their friendship when the man was alive and, yes, Paris Hilton, I include you, much as it pains me to rebuke you on etiquette, oh, Emily Post of our time.

But seriously, let’s ponder this problem. This jacket is extremely fashionable – we know that. But the man who inspired it has, you may have heard, died. Fashion versus respect for the dead. Hmmm, a tricky one. I mean, yes, the man led a sad life and reducing him to a jacket in death would perhaps not be the legacy he wanted (even if he did name his child Blanket) and blah de blah – but we’re talking Balmain here! How can one not lust?

And let me throw in this other consideration: this jacket’s exaggerated shoulders make one look very thin. OK, question solved, surely. Michael, of all people, would have understood.

• Post questions to Hadley Freeman, Ask Hadley, The Guardian, Kings Place, 90 York Way, London N1 9GU. Email: ask.hadley@guardian.co.uk