When Hillary Clinton joked that she should have called her auto-biography Hard Choices, The Scrunchie Chronicles, 112 Countries And It's Still All About The Hair she was, grimly, not very far off the mark. For Clinton, who of course has accomplished quite a lot more than changing her hairstyles (have you seen the size of her auto-biography?) is a powerful woman in the public eye. Which means that people will ask her about her hair. And criticise her fondness of pant suits in every colour of the rainbow. And in every profile of her there will be some kind of reference to her outfit, and especially her shoes.

This is how all women in power are treated – from Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg and her telling 'Prada ankle boots' to the White House counsel who was nicknamed the 'itigatrix'for her killer collection of Christian Louboutin heels. The focus on the sartorial choices of powerful women is, Amanda Hess at Slate puts it, a "scourge on journalistic profiles of powerful women".

Clothes are seen to be an extra personality trait for women in a way that the blue suits worn by gents in the corridors of power are not. As Hess writes,

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"For some journalists, reporting that a woman wears high-heeled shoes of various colors and origins apparently passes for a weighty detail that gives some insight into the subject’s character. Often, that perceived insight is negative: Heels are mentioned to paint women as spendy, superficial, severe, or a conspicuous deviation from the male standard."

And now Amal Clooney, nee Alamuddin, the incredibly accomplished barrister wife of that actor guy George Clooney is the latest to capture the interest of the frock watchers.

With good reason of course, Clooney is incredibly chic and is rumoured to have been tapped by Anna Wintour to cover Vogue magazine.

But asking Clooney when she is appearing before the European Court of Human Rights to represent Armenia’s interests in a case against Armenian genocide denier, Turkish politician Doğu Perinçek, about her style choices kind of seems like a waste of her time.

And she’s not going to have it, deftly shutting down a reporters’ 'fashion speculation' with this zinger:

Ede & Ravenscroft are the tailors that make her barrister robes. You know, the ones she wears when she’s representing the likes of Julian Assange and the former prime minister of Ukraine.

The problem lies in, as Jess Cartner-Morley puts it in the Guardian in her dissection of the reactions to Hillary Clinton's scrunchie, we still haven't worked out how to accept that women can be both stylish and clever. What a novel thought.

But Amal Clooney is certainly giving us solid schooling in that.

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