Visible underpants are in on the catwalk – and fashion is safe and well

I think a lot of women look great wearing no pants.

I saw them all strutting by the Seine in their designer knickers and heels during the recent Paris Fashion Week, an oversize cashmere jacket thrown on top. They looked wild: like half-undressed Barbies, mildly amused at the stunt they were pulling, glowering at the mortals beneath them.

If you’ve got the legs, the confidence — if the breeze doesn’t bother you and if you don’t plan to take public transport — then go for it, I say.

The knickers they were wearing are turning up in boutiques now, and they’re priced around the same as an extra-large air-fryer. Only time and multiple use will tell which is the better buy.

Yes, I’m as porous as anyone else when it comes to fashion trends. Like a Handmaid in an Attwood novel, I’ve been born and groomed into it. Skinny jeans and two-inch zip flies? Hell yes — right up to the moment I abandon them in favour of the wide-leg jeans I staggered around in during my teens.

So, don’t roll your eyes when I tell you that while a girlfriend and I laugh ourselves sick about those now starting to turn up to events pant-less but in designer undies, I predict that by summer we’ll be sending each other hasty selfies from clothing store changerooms asking, “Can I get away with this?”

Another friend has been texting me for months about the absurdity of dresses with bits cut out of the waist; now, like a starving prisoner in a cell full of rats, she says they’re starting to look good.

My first great fashion odyssey

I came of fashion age when the Women’s Weekly had a section called “What people are wearing overseas” and Myer had a women’s clothing section called “Better Dresses”. The concept of aspiration, a fashion hierarchy and a summit to climb was hardwired into me.

My first great fashion odyssey was an early Saturday morning train and bus trip from Nunawading to Lygon Street Carlton as a teenager to track down the Merivale pit suit I’d stumbled over in a hand-me-down POL magazine from the neighbour next door.

It was a stunning silk patterned jump suit, with contrasting collar and cuffs and I could never afford it. But I scraped together all I could in the hope of lay-buying this extraordinary thing that was going to be the chrysalis that would transform me.

I was so eager in my mission that the store hadn’t yet opened when I arrived. The sales assistant, a bit bewildered at the sight of this suburban teenage fashion victim, had to tell me that they didn’t stock it — but I found another one there and put that away instead.

It took me months to pay off, but when it was mine, I felt like I could date David Bowie wearing it. I still wish, years later, that I hadn’t given it away.

I know I have spent a fortune on clothes since, and I know some in my life shake their head at my devoted veneration of the fashion gods in my personal pantheon: Alexander McQueen, Albert Elbaz, Tom Ford, Martin Grant, Maria Grazia Chiuri.

Is there something wrong with me? What a question — how dare you? Go ask your mother that, as she turns this way and that in front of the mirror trying to find the one outfit for that socially-fraught occasion that will be like personal armour against the complexities of the day.

If only Carla Zampatti was still with us: she knew the battles we had to fight, and fashion Kevlar never looked as stylish as hers.

The ancient history of adornment

Fashion truth-teller and fellow fashion lover, the performer Celeste Barber, is about to present The Way We Wore on ABC TV and I’m with her as she asks: If fashion is so deep inside so many of us, then why is it so often dismissed as shallow?

Like Barber, I’ve spent enough time around the designers, the manufacturers, the sewers, the marketers and exporters (not to mention the Australian woolgrowers in whose industry I’ve had a minor specialty since my junior days as a business reporter) to know how serious a business this is.

Families, livelihoods economies and whole communities have relied on our design and technology smarts: where it gets fascinating is how and why we have fallen for their sometimes-nefarious psychological games.

But can we be blunt for a moment? Do you really think that culture is the sole creation of scores of shrewd Donatella Versaces and their impossibly narrow dresses, or Insta-nobodies and their carefully curated self-delusion?

Let me take you to the walls of the temples in the Nile Delta and show you the rituals and aspirations of ancient Egyptian women (and men) and their addiction to adornment, decoration, tiny waists, and a whole lot of eye-liner.

I can show you the staggering self-indulgence and self-decoration of the Romans who could afford the finer things, and the near-torture of 18th century undergarments for women in search of a vanishing curvature.

Today it’s visible underpants; once it was chest bandages for a silhouette of pure androgyny. What’s the difference?

The ancient history of adornment, as well as the unassailable psychological truths of ego and self-esteem, can tell us something lasting about the persistence of fashion and our vulnerability to its excesses and stupidity — nothing new there.

I’m always amused by the anger these fashion waves create: the pearl-clutching horror when crop-tops and mini-skirts come surging back.

Costume means play

Does all this seem offensively trivial during a cost-of-living crisis? Not at all: ask any economic historian about the endurance of the affordable treat — the new lipstick, a small scarf — as women and men make their joyless list of bills and costs and as more expensive pleasures are crossed off.

I think that’s why I find the more absurd fashion developments so beguiling: it is their very absurdity, and the alternative reality they promise, that is the appeal when all else is grim.

Fashion becomes true costume, and costume means play, and performance and tapping out a new story on a different stage. And that sounds like a blessed escape right now.

This weekend recovered treasures, restored towns, and re-booted franchises. Recycling at its best.

Have a safe and happy weekend, and as AusMusic month rolls on, and after the fun of the Arias, it’s time for these guys again. I love DMA’s – that combination of sweet and crunchy – and their Best Group win was so well-deserved. This is from their latest album, and it’s a jangly bit of joy.

Go well.

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