The shoulder-padded blazer is not a modern invention - it's a 500-year-old strategy for visual power, and it's now coming back into wardrobes without much questioning. The first to use it was Henry VIII in the 16th century, and not as fashion but as politics - doublets with padded shoulders to look wider, more intense, more dangerous. The English monarch even passed laws restricting who was allowed to wear similar clothing.

Women took much longer. By the end of the 19th century, when women started stepping into the street for work, the first practical forms with a bit of shoulder construction also appeared. Elsa Schiaparelli in the 1930s built a shoulder architecture inspired by military uniforms. The Second World War made them functional - women went into factories, clothing adapted. In 1966, Yves Saint Laurent legitimised the women's suit jacket.

But the real era of „power dressing" arrived in the 80s. As women began entering the corporate world, shoulders became a signal - not of aesthetics, but of breakthrough. The shoulder-padded blazer said „don't ignore me at this meeting." That was Thatcher in the prime ministerial chair, that was Joan Collins in „Dynasty," that was the idea that a woman could occupy the same space as a man - literally, with her shoulders.

Today the blazer is back for a very different reason. Psychologist Angela Pera says clothing isn't only for the eye - it shifts the inner feeling before the emotion follows: „soft but powerful, it starts on the outside and influences everything within." In other words - if you're having a hard day, put on the shoulder-padded blazer. Not for the image in the mirror, but for the moment you step into the room and see who loses the first second. It's still the same arithmetic as in the 16th century, just without the swords.