QUICK, Let’s Decide What The New Bare Shoulder Will Be

Oh, what a summer to be a shoulder! Not since Princess Diana wore her ‘revenge’ LBD in 1994 have shoulders had such a moment in the spotlight.

Usually hidden away under fabric, strangled by straps, occasionally suffocated by an embellished epaulette, summer 2016 will forever be remembered as the summer the shoulders finally roamed free. In parks, offices and parties; in Bardots and bandeaus; shimmying across wedding dancefloors. Walking through Soho on a sunny day has been a veritable shoulder safari, clavicles and scapulas in every shape, size and shade, all just happy to be out.

But it can’t last forever. Shh, it can’t. Pay attention and you can almost feel it can’t you, creeping in like a chill north easterly breeze? Fashion, changing its mind.

We have a matter of weeks – days, HOURS maybe – until the whole cold-shoulder thing suddenly goes off like old milk and fashion presents us with a new body bit to fetishise. So let's try to beat them at their own game! What will it be? What's left? Arse cheek? Lower kneecap? Tops with only the armpits cut out?

Here are a few ideas.

The bit above the ankle

Ankles have had plenty of moments in the spotlight, obviously – remember February 2013, when you lost all feeling in your feet – but now the strip above the ankle (the uppankle? Lankle? Dunno) is waiting in the wings to take over. It’s being helped along by the new length of longer midi skirts, reaching way past your knees to your lower calf, and probably teamed with the new breed of flopsy sock-style ankle boot.

Cropped flares are still kicking around too, and jeans are inching up incrementally as boot heights chase them up the leg. Have fun trying to shave the corresponding two inches of exposed skin, everyone.

The neck

Your neck had a sabbatical last winter during the reign of the polo neck, but now it’s coming out of hibernation and it’s going to be flanked, lady-in-waiting-style, by some completely enormous earrings. If they jangle, great; if they look like curtain ties or a stately home light pull, even better.

See Marni and Stella McCartney for whimsical, architectural inspiration, then pull your hair into a low pony and brace yourself for lobe strain.

The side-thigh

Behold, the new side boob! Side-thigh is the flash of leg glimpsed through either a sidey side split, a fronty side split (subtle but important difference) or a wrapover skirt, and helps you to wear this season’s midi-maxi hybrid lengths without feeling like you’re playing an Edwardian lady in a play.

Come tights season, it’ll also be the reason you find yourself buying up pairs of sheer black 15 deniers with an enthusiasm not seen since 1997.

The bit of arm

For those of us so bored of ripped jeans that we’ve started asking sales assistants if they have ‘these but with, like, denim on the knees?’, slashed arms could be just the subversive new take on glam grunge (or ‘glunge’) we’ve been looking for. Finery’s luxe blue glitter rib knit also has a slashed back, for a look that suggests you might have got into a fight with a barbed wire fence on the way to dinner. But only in a super chic way.

Or failing everything else...

One bare shoulder

With fashion’s canny knack of very slightly repackaging a trend and pretending it is brand new, the easiest way to wean yourself off bare shoulders is to put one away. Half the sass, sure, but also half the risk of catching your death come winter. Go skintight and there’ll be no more hitching up or yanking down your ruffles, either.

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**Follow Lauren on Twitter @LaurenBravo **

This article originally appeared on The Debrief.