Susannah Frankel: 'My favourite jeans are Current Elliot in vintage denim – so strait-laced a Sindy doll might have worn them'

There's a fine line between shopping with healthy enthusiasm and displaying signs of out-and-out addiction. For me, this is tested most regularly by the desire to own more pairs of jeans than is strictly necessary. Strange to relate, then, that the discipline with which I have chosen not to invest in denim this season is unprecedented.

My favourite jeans: Current Elliott, the boyfriend ones in vintage denim that look so strait-laced that an old-school Sindy doll might once have worn them; Citizens of Humanity, Avedon leggings, the best stretch in history; J Brand, cigarette legged jeans and the tragically now defunct Steve, for the cut and the fact that they are logo-free...

In my wardrobe now are more than 15 pairs of jeans. If that sounds excessive, you should know that I have lived in denim for the past five years, a fact which hopefully makes my mountain of the stuff slightly less ludicrous.

At the recent London collections, my jeans stayed home while I favoured a more buttoned-up aesthetic. Something in the ether? I was not alone. Jeans were conspicuous by their absence on the catwalk and off. What jeans there were, meanwhile, were dark and skinny. Ignore the hype about flares: everyone else is.

Miuccia Prada never wears jeans. Anna Wintour has never knowingly been seen in denim. Wearing jeans – like going out head-to-toe in black – is deemed lazy, and laziness will not be tolerated.

In fact, and committed as I am to telling the whole truth, there has so far been one exception to this impressively abstemious no-jeans-buying rule. I did fall for just the one new pair for spring. They're skinny, Balenciaga jeans (Balenciaga jeans, it almost goes without saying, are great). And they're brown. How weird is that? Only after I'd got them home did I happen upon Riccardo Tisci's autumn pre-collection for Givenchy (left), and that label's designer telling style.com that brown "is the new black". A feeling of warm smugness overcomes me while writing because RT and I, we're on to something. Clearly.