Is this the end of the bra? The intriguing reason the Paris catwalks were sheer madness (and why they left very little to the imagination)

First, they came for our skirts. Now, they’re coming for our bras.

If you thought the current trend for wearing nothing but your knickers — inspired by Miu Miu’s 2023 collection — was challenging, you might want to avert your eyes from this week’s Paris catwalks.

Showing her debut collection for Chloe yesterday, designer Chemena Kamali unveiled more than a new direction for the house — she also unveiled many of the models’ breasts, in diaphanous dresses in black lace, white guipure and dove-grey chiffon. There was a 1970s feel, a decade where bras were viewed as very much superfluous.

Yet Chloe’s autumn/winter 2024 show was relatively chaste compared with the Saint Laurent catwalk on Tuesday. Yes, the Saint Laurent designs were beautiful. But they were also very sheer.

A model walks the runway in a sheer ruffled dress with a cut-out at the midriff during designer Chemena Kamali's debut collection for Chloe

Much of the Chloe collection revealed the models' breasts such as on this lacey white design

No surprises there: the trend has been gathering momentum, notably over awards season, with many A-listers favouring gossamer gowns.

But this wasn’t just any sheer. This was extreme sheer: a selection of transparent bustiers, blouses and halternecks, all worn without a bra. Sheer terror, if you will — for most women, at least. As an exercise in craftsmanship, the Saint Laurent collection was successful. As an exercise in body diversity, it was less so.

Despite the fashion industry’s promise to be more inclusive, there has been little evidence of real change at this Paris Fashion Week.

Paris has always been the city most wedded to the ideal of the ultra-skinny model. According to the curve model Felicity Hayward, whose ‘Including the Curve’ initiative tracks size inclusivity across the four major fashion capitals of New York, London, Milan and Paris, Paris ranks last, with only 28 plus-size models appearing on the catwalk last season, out of an estimated 4,000 looks shown.

Judging by the collections unveiled so far, this season the number looks set to be even lower.

At the Chloe and Saint Laurent shows, as well as the show for Swedish brand Acne Studios, not only did the models have to be as slender as a reed: they also had to pass the pencil test — that schoolgirl measure of breast size most of us haven’t thought about since we were 13.

Some may argue that you could wear the sheer look at any age, with one proviso: that your breasts aren’t any larger than an A cup. Or maybe, at a push, a pert little B. Which is a low blow for body diversity. A cynic might even argue that this was the point. The average cup size in the UK is a 36D.

Impertinent as it feels to discuss a woman’s breast size, when the breast in question is out on display, it’s only human to conjecture.

Designer Anthony Vaccarello's Saint Laurent collection followed a similar theme, as many models wore darker sheer outfits

One model in the Chloe show wore a gold spell-out belt over her sheer white dress with thigh-high black leather boots

And the bra fitters at Marks & Spencer could surely have assessed in a heartbeat the cup size of front-row guest, 39-year-old actress and director Olivia Wilde, who looked eye-catching in a transparent black bodysuit worn with a black pencil skirt. Georgia May Jagger, 32, also embraced the naked trend in a sheer black halterneck with vertical stripes.

Any VIP guest over 40, however, was less bold. Actress Monica Bellucci, 59, wore a jumpsuit, while supermodels Kate Moss, 50, and Linda Evangelista, 58, kept their coats firmly on.

But there was no such modesty on the catwalk. Coats, when they appeared, were largely slung insouciantly over one arm, the better to showcase the sheer clothes.

According to Anthony Vaccarello, the Belgian-Italian designer who has helmed Saint Laurent since 2016, the body-conscious clothes were supposed to resemble sheer undergarments, ‘simultaneously revealing and shrouding the woman wearing them, like hyper-graphic X-rays’.

Vaccarello had made life even harder for himself (and his ateliers) by choosing to work with the same sheer fabric used for tights.

As anyone who’s ever laddered a pair within seconds of wearing them will attest, this is not a durable material. Speaking backstage after the show, the designer admitted it would be difficult to put such delicate clothes into mass production.

Of the 48 looks shown, so many were transparent that by the end of the show, the nudity had almost lost its shock value. But perhaps that was the point. On the red carpet, the body positivity movement has seen a host of twenty-something celebrities including Florence Pugh, Dua Lipa, Zendaya and Kendall Jenner embrace the no-bra trend, whether by wearing transparent tops or backless gowns.

For some, going braless is as much of a political statement as a fashion statement. ‘Keeping women down by commenting on their bodies has worked for a very long time,’ said Pugh, in response to the backlash she received for baring her breasts in a Valentino gown last summer. ‘We’ve become so terrified of the human body that we can’t even look at my two cute little nipples behind fabric in a way that isn’t sexual.’

But going braless isn’t always a bold statement of freedom. For some, going braless is simply another way to get noticed. And in the social media age, getting noticed is the point.

As attention-seeking ploys go, it’s not new. In 1966, Yves Saint Laurent famously shocked society by putting a sheer blouse on the catwalk, saying ‘nothing is more beautiful than a naked body’.

Some of us might beg to differ. For anyone whose cup size runneth over, whose confidence is low or who doesn’t have a chauffeur to drop them home safely at the end of a night out (sheer hits differently on the No.73 bus), there’s only one option: to ruin the look by wearing a bra.

Or, of course, to bypass it entirely. After all, before you can say ‘pass the nipple tape’, opaque clothing will no doubt be in vogue again.