Style: From hard-nosed newspaper boss to wide-eyed innocent

Rebekah Brooks didn’t just choose her words carefully at the Leveson Inquiry yesterday. She gave due consideration to her outfit as well.

Gone was her usual uniform of trouser suits and overcoats, the type of ballsy power dressing usually expected of a businesswoman in high places.

In their place, a simple dress, but one with a more complex message. Turning up in a demure navy shift dress with a white Peter Pan collar; a style favoured by the likes of Twiggy in the 1960s, and synonymous with that wide-eyed, innocent look, spoke volumes about the image Ms Brooks was attempting to portray. A popular choice when wanting to seem innocent, the Peter Pan collar has made a few notable court appearances. Bianca Jagger wore one in the 1980s, while Winona Ryder favoured a Peter Pan-collared coat when she was charged with shoplifting. Ms Brooks had clearly done her homework.

This £475 dress – a Marcie Peter Pan shift from online boutique Suzannah – is described on the company website as perfect when styled with a pillbox hat for a work event. Coupled with her minimal make-up and flowing locks, it gave her the look of a pre-Raphaelite heroine, coquettish and doe-eyed, and not a hard-nosed former News International CEO at the centre of one of the biggest political scandals in years.

MERLE BROWN