The long and short of haute shorts, this summer

People of Great Britain, what has happened to you? Where are all the writers of letters to the BBC, complaining that too much of Kirsty Wark’s knees were on display on Newsnight and that Emily Maitlis is being deliberately “titillating” by daring to wear a medium-length dress? Presumably they are all cowering behind their lace curtains, quivering with rage at the amount of leg flesh on show this summer, not on TV, but right outside their windows.

For a while it looked like summer 08 was in danger of going down in the style annals as the season of gladiator sandals – you know, those multistrap affairs that make you think simultaneously of your great aunt’s orthopaedic shoes and Russell Crowe. But another trend has resoundingly trumped those overly buckled monstrosities, though it is one that also has something of the ancient warrior about them, making you wonder if the high street has simply been raiding the wardrobe department of Gladiator for ideas this summer. Anyway, you know what it is because in the time it has taken you to read this much of the article, six examples have walked right past you: it’s shorts. Not the toe-in-the-water knee-length versions that were around last summer, but proper short shorts, on everyone, everywhere.

At Topshop, sales of super-short shorts and full-on hotpants are up 46% from this time last year. Such is the success that the next collection to come in stores is based, according to a Topshop spokesman, “entirely around the hotpant, and I can’t remember the time an entire collection was based around just one garment”. (By the way, you know that an item has really become fashionable when it is referred to in the fashion singular: look in style magazines and you will see what I mean – “a shoe”, “a jean” and now, it seems, “a hotpant”.)

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