The color. The cut. The utter chicness. There’s something undeniably magical about wearing a pant suit in a snowy shade. Never more so than during the festive season, says Anna Murphy.

As little children we were told that a white Christmas was what we should be dreaming about. No wonder. Snow is magical at the best of times, but when it arrives to order on Christmas morning it feels as special, as precious, as if it had been wrapped up and put in your stocking, whatever age you happen to be.

I still remember a long-ago Christmas Day when I was staying in the Yorkshire Dales and, after a very unpromising Christmas Eve, woke up to a dusting of what looked to be icing sugar. By the end of the day, it had transformed into thick royal icing-style coverage, the moors looking like a Christmas cake of record-breaking dimensions. Heaven. The fact that I was in my 30s didn’t diminish my sense of wonderment one jot.

Yet there’s a different kind of white Christmas, a more reliable kind of white Christmas that can be conjured to order. It may seem a world away from the meteorological variety, but at the same time it can evoke something of the same feeling – joy! I am talking about the white-tuxedo-suit Christmas. I know of no more guaranteed way to look – and therefore – feel wonderful on December 25, not to mention on any other day of the year.

There’s a reason why women as effortlessly chic as Cate Blanchett and Lauren Hutton turn time and again to a white pant suit; why Bianca Jagger famously went as far as to get married in one. Quite simply, this is the epitome of fabulosity. And, sure, fabulosity may not actually be a word, but if there is one ensemble that deserves its very own neologism, I would argue it’s this.

That sense of magic delivered by a fall of snow is invoked too by tailoring in the same shade as a snowflake. From whence such sorcery? Partly it’s because that delicious pallor flatters and lifts the complexion, like a pearl necklace. Partly it’s because this is a choice that remains just that little bit unexpected, I think. It’s a dress that’s still the norm when we dress up. To defy people’s expectations, even by way of something as timelessly chic as a tuxedo suit, is to create your own moment. Who doesn’t want that?

That the tuxedo suit is a game of two halves also has something to do with it. By which I am not referring to the fact it consists, of course, of twinned separates – although there is, indeed, something alchemical about the way a matching blazer and pants work together to flatter your lines. Rather, it’s about the interplay between the masculine and the feminine; between the practical (a suit is, after all, a form of office uniform, in origin) and the uncompromisingly glamorous (Marlene Dietrich was the first woman to wear a tuxedo in her 1928 film, Morocco. You can’t get more glamorous than that). You can amp up these contrasts further by way of some fantastic chandelier earrings – my favorite approach – and/or a great pair of heels – though, good news, flats are fine, too.

A mere suit might make one think of the office, but a tuxedo suit signals it’s Saturday night, not Monday morning – praise be! Unless Monday morning is Christmas morning, of course. Which this year, it is. All we need now is that aforementioned icing on the cake. A white-tuxedo-suit Christmas. The dream.

Anna Murphy is Fashion Director of the Times. Her new book is Destination Fabulous: Finding Your Way To The Best You Yet (£20, Mitchell Beazley)