How to dress: What happened to the dress-over-leggings look?

The fashion police deemed it over, that's what. What's a girl to do now, when it's hot outside, but skin tone or mood rule out showing those legs?
Jess leggings
This is now stand-by weekend wear rather than going-out wear. Photograph: David Newby for the Guardian

Wardrobes are ruthless places. A dress that is the apple of my eye one day can fall from favour in a nanosecond because I spot a particularly bad celebrity wearing something similar. After one too many pizza nights in front of the football, last month's favourite jeans don't look quite so good any more and start the slow journey to back-of-the-wardrobe anonymity. And as for white T-shirts, well, if they make it through three wash cycles without being relegated from ironed-and-hung-up to stuffed-in-a-drawer, that's a good innings.

The same thing happens with trends. Take the dress-over-leggings look. Two years ago this was positively a fashion statement. It was a "look". It said you had made an effort, tried something new for the occasion. Then, by last summer, it had become ubiquitous. It was stand-by weekend wear, rather than going-out wear.

So the question is, now what? Is it all over for the dress over leggings? It's still visible at street level, but has pretty much vanished from the magazines. Frankly, I'm torn. I very much want the look to have, as it were, legs, because it's incredibly useful to wear a summer dress on days when temperature, skin tone or mood rule out bare legs. But I can't help feeling the dress over leggings has slipped another notch on the fashion food chain: appropriate, now, for errands rather than for outings. The good news is, this creates a vacancy. Shorts over leggings? Stranger things have happened.

Jess wears dress, £40, by Topshop. Leggings, £15, by Falke, from Shoes, £250, by Russell & Bromley.

Styling: Aradia Crockett. Hair and make-up: Charlotte Lowes using Estée Lauder.