Male order: style swaps.

The woman in your life is colonising large parts of your wardrobe. I don't mean just borrowing your T-shirts and making your jumpers go baggy round the backside (how do they manage it?). I mean actually wearing the sorts of things that were once the preserve of us chaps – only in smaller sizes, sillier colours and, if you're gentlemen's shoemaker Grenson, fashioned on narrower lasts.

The venerable British footwear company makes those chunky brogues which are all the rage with people who roll up their trouser legs too far. In fact they've proved so popular that Grenson has broken with 150 years of tradition and is now making shoes for women. The collection has just launched and is called The Fem Brogue. It even features the Goodyear Welted Soles our grandfathers speak of so lovingly as they watch re-runs of All Creatures Great And Small. Is nothing sacred?

Clearly not. Of course it's decades since we men handed over our trousers to the women, so we should be used to this pilfering by now. After our breeks came our belted macs, our fedoras, our suits and our ties. Marlene Dietrich sported most of those at one time or another. More recently the flat cap (guilty party: Madonna) and even the replica football kit (think of Parminder Nagra in Bend It Like Beckham) have gone the way of the women.

So what's left to us? What hasn't yet been co-opted for use by the distaff side? There's the beard, I suppose. Women like them, on the whole, but not enough to want to grow their own. Same way I feel about runner beans, come to think of it. Other than that, there isn't much.

It's not like we've been given anything in return, either. Sure, we're allowed to use moisturiser these days and for a brief moment in the 1990s it was vaguely acceptable to wear a skirt/sarong on holiday. But I still call this one-way fashion traffic. I still call this being on the losing side.

Or maybe not. Perhaps there is a way of putting a positive spin on all this. After all, while women seem to want the clothes men wear, it doesn't generally work the other way round. Even if I had no fingers on either hand I'd still have enough to count the times I've cast envious glances at a female colleague's cap-sleeved M&S blouse. Perhaps, despite all evidence to the contrary, the balance of fashion power does lie with us. If that's the case, who's wearing the trousers now girls, eh?