We’ve got a new fashion term for you to add to your style vocab and it’s likely to be as divisive as it’s naval-baring cousin: the ‘hip-riff’ – when peep-holes of fabric are cut down from the waist to reveal one’s hips.
A pelvis-baring dress at Stella McCartney’s show this morning is the most extreme example we’ve seen of this so far, but unlike the waist-defining dresses she cleverly created with mesh and Jessica Rabbit shaped black inserts for her much-lauded (and copied on the high street) AW11 collection, today’s offering featured fully-open cut-outs that swung low and showed hip-bone in that totally unashamed way that the upper echelons of Paris fashion love the shit out of.
While you might be veering from thoughts such as ‘er, where are your knickers supposed to go?’, to ‘seriously, I thought we said goodbye to skeletal accessories with Heroin Chic’, consider this: what happens in Paris pretty much never stays in Paris, but tends to have a way of translating itself into something flesh-owning humans can – and do – willingly wear. Plus, the noughties are well and truly back, and never has an era embraced the pelvic region like that immediately post Y2K. Just ask Britney.
READ MORE: Brace Yourself. The Noughties Are Back In Fashion
Step forward Céline for the easiest answer to just how this might work IRL. At Sunday’s show we saw those same sideways cut-outs, but here, Phoebe Philo, ever one to make fashion’s wilder ideas look like no bigger deal than slinging on your favourite old T-shirt, put contrasting high-waisted trousers underneath cut-out tunics, and suddenly you can see how the hip-riff might just catch on.
You get the shape of a crop-top without actually having to really show much of your midriff, which is good news if you enjoy carbs or have a bellybutton piercing scar that suggests you heartily embraced noughties trends the first time around.
Raf Simons showed similarly scissor-happy shapes in his collection for Dior (which incidentally, is also the best argument for Bermuda shorts we’ve ever seen), with the holes placed just a little higher, proving again that the hip-riff can indeed be flattering if treated responsibly.
Is it bye-bye bellybuttons for SS15 and hello hips, then?
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.