She is 45, a single mother and has a style habit that demands a healthy bank balance. In many ways Yasmin Yusuf, one of the most powerful people in British fashion, personifies the woman the youth-obsessed style industry must learn to love.

In her first interview since leaving struggling M&S, she identifies a breed of women which the high street ignores very much at its peril. By next year, she says, half the women in this country will be aged 40-plus. It is these women, and those coming up just behind them, whose influence will be unprecedented, because it is they who will make the buying decisions for themselves and for their households.