Midlife guide to … hip cleavage

Would you mind putting that away?

Pardon? This neckline is practically Victorian…

I’m not referring to your chest area – it’s your hip cleavage that’s threatening to take my eye out.

Hip what?

You heard. High-legged swimwear à la Bay watcher a Pammy, which offers a glimpse of pelvis, is “the new décolletage”, according to the New York Post’s gossip site, Page Six, which has decreed the look to be “spring’s hottest celebrity trend”.

How can a part of the human skeleton, which has existed for some 200,000 years, suddenly be “in”?

Because the world’s gone mad and, frankly, young Hollywood types flaunting their bones on a beach is light relief we should likely be grateful for.

If you say so. Who’s been parading their pubis of late, then?

Every B-list star you’ve quasi-heard of. Bella Hadid (rings a bell), Hailey Baldwin (ish) and Shay Mitchell (not the faintest) have all posted such pictures of themselves on beaches, to much social media acclaim. It does follow in the esteemed footsteps of other great cleavage trends of yore, I suppose.

Here’s a question I’ll regret: refresh my memory?

There’s been toe cleavage, man cleavage (see also: “he-vage”), bum cleavage, side cleavage, no cleavage, cleavage cleavage, stop-the-world-i-want-to-get-off cleavage; truly, when it comes to matters of the chest, the full gamut has been run.

Sounds like it. Do people really consider these to be trends, or are they just passing Insta-fripperies?

Not so. At least, not according to Manolo Blahnik, who in 2000 explained that “the secret to toe cleavage, a very important part of the sexuality of the shoe”, is to “only show the first two cracks”.

Proof, if it were needed, that we have really reached the hip of the iceberg.