March 2002. Katie Grand, editor of Pop magazine and stylist, is spotted backstage at the Milan shows in a shrunken flight-cum-boiler suit. Fashion antennae begin to twitch. A couple of weeks later, Arena’s fashion director, Allan Kennedy, is in a London studio, styling a utilitarian shoot called “Work in Progress”. It’s inspired by the iconic black-and- white photographs of 1930s farm labourers taken by the German photographer August Sander. Antennae are now vibrating. By the time the designer Bella Freud rocks up to a fashion launch a month or so later wearing a pair of carpenter’s pants with an old school blazer and heels, they’re whirring wildly.Picture these seemingly unconnected events and you’ve just witnessed the birth of a trend. Not a catwalk trend but one from the street, sparked by fashion-savvy types plugged into the next big thing. In this case, it appears to be workwear. Suddenly, style pundits are forsaking fashion mecca (Harvey Nichols), and scouring Alexandra Workwear and Workwear World for mechanic’s overalls, industrial boiler-suits and decorator’s dungarees instead. Indeed, looking like a labourer (albeit a squeaky-clean one) and adopting the proletarian aesthetic is the height of insider fashion.”I always check for a good hardware shop wherever I am, because they’re just the sexiest stores,” says the stylist Judy Blame, who made his name in the Eighties by juxtaposing high-fashion labels and street/ workwear finds. “I’ve got 100 boiler suits. All of them are oversized, you can just throw them and mix them with something else.” While Balenciaga’s intricately reconstructed summer combat pants may have inspired endless lookalikes for winter (nearly every designer sent a pair storming down their runway), the prole trend is less about the catwalk’s theatrical interpretation (silk organza boiler suits, anyone?), and more to do with forcing the military aesthetic into a safe zone.

“We really wanted it to look more utilitarian than military,” says the designer Justin Thornton, of Preen’s waistcoats and off-kilter skirts that are a patchwork of industrial pockets, drawstrings and zip fastenings from recycled military parkas. “That’s why we focused on the function of the clothes rather than the military aspect.”

With its drip-dry, easy-clean, stay-pressed connotations, workwear is fast becoming something of a chic anti-chic statement. Shrug on a boiler suit (the arms tied around your waist), with Topshop’s bestselling “Kate Moss” vest and a pair of strappy heels, and you will not only appear effortlessly hip but also be able to tick off several trends in one go: androgyny, oversized clothing, dishevelled elegance.

“A lot of very stylish people don’t wear severe glamour any more. Whereas mixing something utilitarian with something glamorous is cool now,” says Thornton, whose workwear pinafore tops are designed to look as low-key with a slick pair of tuxedo pants as with a pair of faded jeans and flip- flops. “The people who I think have something really special about them look like they haven’t tried too hard.”

As creative director of the Doneger Group, a New York fashion forecasting firm, it is David Wolfe’s job to define and make sense of emerging trends. “I think it’s an evolution of grunge,” he explains. “It’s another way to dress up in dressed-down clothes.” According to Wolfe, the no-frills aesthetic is discernibly Seventies retro, rewinding to a time when such an anti-fashion spirit was shockingly new. “It was a major trend in the mid-Seventies,” he recalls. “It was a reaction to the beginning of what became the Eighties’ over- affluent, overachiever, Armani- esque mainstream. The reason it’s happening now is the same deal.”

And it’s not just women who are adopting the utilitarian uniform. “Workwear’s a really great look for straight guys,” says Allan Kennedy of Arena. “It’s pared-down, simple and minimal, which makes men look more attractive precisely because it looks so effortless.”

Elevated by fashion folk to an aesthetic, it’s a look that ultimately relies on a romanticised view of the type of industry and labour that has been all but wiped out by the IT revolution. The irony is, if you adopt the aesthetic, you too can look like you’ve done a hard day’s graft when in fact you’ve been sitting in front of a laptop, fiddling with a mouse all day.

“The other night, I was sitting in a pub, wearing my hammer-head necklace and my worn-out JCB denims,” Blame says. “Anyway, this woman comes up to me and asks, `Are you a metalworker?’. I said, `No, love. I work in fashion’. But she obviously thought I was, because of what I was wearing. So the look worked. It really worked. Hah!”