Fashion is currently undergoing a great resurrection of things you previously swore you would never be seen dead with. I've had to eat my words already on stonewash jeans and scrunchies (I haven't worn one recently, for what it's worth, but other people have and apparently they're cool again) and it feels like I'm about five seconds away from having to literally eat my headgear after scornfully deriding those bloody awful velvet jingly jester hats that 90s crusties used to wear (please, anything but those).

The most recent article to be exhumed from the dank tomb of 'surely not', after the Mum- and latterly the Dad-jean, comes the Mum-bag – or, as I like to call it, the 'What The F-Rucksack'. It's a very specific type of buckled backwear, eminently practical to the point of being overly fussy, a late Nineties / early Noughties attempt to turn the honest, durable, pragmatic rucksack into something more feminine.

By rights it should make us feel sick: these sort of fashion hybrids have latterly been assiduously avoided by those with taste – the only back-bag acceptable for many years now has been of the preppy Ally Capellino variety, or a vintage Prada nylon number.

But Marks & Spencer proudly proclaims this week its 'stylish pack' (pictured, £29.50) and, *jaw hits floor*, blow me down if it doesn't look pretty much like any of the ones being sported not-even-ironically-anymore in Dalston these days. This is obviously great news for Marks & Sparks, as it is rare that the chain's target market comes into so perfect a confluence with what is also hip and trendy. A boon, by all accounts.

So is it time to embrace the Mum-bag? That depends. Can you look at one without remembering the days of following something similar doggedly through crowded public places in order not to lose get lost or separated? Will you still be waiting expectantly for tissues, sticking plasters or a notebook and pen to come out of it, to either salve wounds or entertain you? Do you in your heart feel that this sort bag should only be worn if you're with a man who looks like he has a money belt tucked into his cargo shorts or a coin purse in his special holiday bum-bag?

If yes to any, you're too old, I'm afraid. The Mum-bag is strictly for the sort of saplings whose own mothers were too young for them the first time round.