Many a professional woman will remember the precise moment they first saw Giorgio Armani's deconstructed jacket, minus the shoulder pads. It was 1989, and the new aesthetic coincided with a less aggressive look for female professionals.

In the years following Armani's “jacket as cardigan” period – and also thanks to the super-skinny aesthetic of Helmut Lang and the soft Perry Ellis grunge moment – the shoulder pad even became something of a joke, a fashion anachronism most women were pleased to relegate to the back of their closets.

Well, if many designers are to be believed, this recession is the perfect time to dig out that old jacket because the large 1980s-style shoulder is back. As Domenico Dolce said of the round, rectangular and pentagonal shapes on jackets, sleeves and dresses in Dolce & Gabbana's spring collection, shoulders have a “new structure, new silhouettes and proportion. Clothes give the illusion of being sculpted.” So is it just a case of economics and fashion once again running in parallel – with one reflecting the other – or is this resurgence of the power shoulder a symptom of something deeper going on?