Embrace the chic simplicity of your inner trolley dolly

Out of the various careers I considered pursuing but which didn't, it turned out, consider pursuing me, aviation was by far the best dressed.

I say aviation, but being a child of the 1970s, it never occurred to me that a girl could actually drive a plane. Not a whole one. In the sky. I wanted to be an air hostess. Or to give the job its full glorious title, a Mandy, Fly me.

Those 1970s Pan Am ads were something else - implausibly gorgeous women in unrealistically chic uniforms not-so-subtly conveying their willingness to offer services that strayed way beyond the terse "Meat or fish?" endearments of today's flight attendants. Worryingly, they provided a backdrop to my formative years. No wonder my feminist belief system was skewed for a while.

At the time, no one asked the obvious: namely, if Pan Am staff were really that beautiful, why were they busy clearing up sick instead of hot footing it to the nearest model agency? Pushing a trolley up and down a crowded 747 was already losing its lustre in the 1970s. Even my mild-mannered mother told me I could do better - and she never criticised anything that looked like gainful employment for her daughters. But those ads weren't concerned with career prospects: it was all about the gratification of male customers. I loved them.

Aged nine, I hatched a cunning plan. The navy blue caps that were standard issue to Girl Guides were almost identical to the old Boac ones. I'm not proud to admit this, but yes, I swore allegiance to Queen, country and reef knots just to get my mitts on one. Captain got her own back when we went to camp by putting me on latrine duty.

I'd like to say it was worth it, but by then I'd moved on from wanting to be in Pan Am to wanting to be in Pan's People. The hat was the business, though. Air hostess uniforms were terrific in the 1960s. Is that because the job was considered quite glamorous and airlines spent more money on uniforms? Or did the uniforms make the job seem more aspirational? Both, probably. Or perhaps, in a heady martini haze of the jet age, no one noticed whether they were made of polyester or wool gabardine. Also, unlike today's uniforms, they actually bore some resemblance to what chic women everywhere wanted to wear - ie Jackie Kennedy's wardrobe.

Shortly we'll be ODing on (retro) cabin chic. Pan Am, the glossy ABC TV drama starring Christina Ricci and an impressive back-up crew (director of The West Wing, executive producer of ER etc) launched this Autumn in the US to OK-ish reviews. The New York Times sniffed that it slinked around the shadow of Mad Men, and pointed out that, where the latter slyly dismantles the female-oppressing mores of the 1960s, Pan Am seems nostalgic for them - but conceded it was enjoyable all the same. The show will head here soon.

Air hostess-y clothes have already landed. Pencil skirts, elbow-length gloves, Peter Pan collars, pussy-cat bows, chisel-toed court shoes and boxy little jackets and cardigans - it's a male chauvinist's fantasy. In theory, that leaves feminists in a pickle. Clearly we should only wear this with lashings of irony. But irony can be such a faff. The only other alternative, if you love cabin chic, and I do, is to revel its practical aspects. These are comfortable, decorous clothes that won't date - a reassuring emblem on the bumpy flight of life in the 21st century. At it's best, it's essentially an expression of chic simplicity. Let's forget dungarees and boiler suits and pretend this is what feminism fought for all along.