Are you brave – and warm – enough to go out in just your pants?

‘Underwear-as-outerwear’ is supposedly the big fashion trend of the moment in Hollywood – for both women and men, says Olivia Petter. The Oscars red carpet is going to be a breeze…

Emma Corrin rocked the ‘underwear-as-outerwear’ look at the Venice Film Festival in September (Getty Images)

The trendiest thing you can wear right now is nothing at all. Okay, not nothing. But it might as well be. The good news is, unlike many zany new fashion trends, this is something you probably already own. In fact, you probably have several pairs.

Introducing pants, the coolest item of 2024. You might know them better as underwear. But be warned: saying so will out you as a sartorial simpleton. You see, today’s pants are not just pants. They are actually trousers. And you’re supposed to wear them out and about, ideally with some sort of cardigan and a pair of sheer black tights.

To the uninitiated, this might all sound a little ridiculous. But to anyone who’s been following the catwalks at fashion month, it’s already been drilled into you that this is what you should be wearing. It all started back in February when The Crown’s Emma Corrin sashayed down the runway in a pair of gold, sparkly Miu Miu knickers. Paired with just a beige jumper and worn over tights, it was a simple look that would go on to define wardrobes for the following months.

Since then, we’ve seen everyone from Kendall Jenner and Hailey Bieber to Taylor Russell and Beyonce ditching their trousers in the name of fashion. Designers have also started to litter their collections with them, with everyone from Dior, Chanel, Stella McCartney, Victoria Beckham, Gucci, Dolce & Gabbana and Acne all paying homage to pants in some shape or form. I, for one, cannot wait for the awards season red-carpets…

According to fashion search engine Tagwalk, 38 per cent of designers who showed their spring/summer 2024 collections in Paris featured a variation of the humble knicker. Meanwhile, Vogue Business claims that searches for “hotpants” have risen by 114 per cent in terms of share per collection in SS24 compared to AW23.

Usually, the look is paired with an oversized T-shirt, jumper or blazer. Sometimes, it’s worn with a matching knitted cardigan – as Corrin did at the Venice Film Festival in September – or a heavy duty leather motorcycle jacket. There are endless variations. The one thing that is constant? A pair of slim, cellulite-free legs.

In a year when everyone and their uncle started taking a diabetes drug to lose weight, perhaps it shouldn’t surprise us that the biggest fashion trend should be tailored towards slim frames. There will be those who argue that this is not the case, of course – “anyone can walk around in their knickers!” – and I’m part of the problem by suggesting those with larger body types can’t tap into the trend. Of course they can. The trouble is that they aren’t. And I’m not entirely sure they would, either.

This is a trend that, so far, I’ve only seen worn by slim people whose bodies conform to a singular, idealised type that continues to dominate the runways and red carpets over and over again. As a UK size eight myself, some people might say I’m the perfect fit to follow in the footsteps of the lithe-limbed Jenners of the world.

To hell, I am; my legs don’t look like that. And even if they did, would I really feel comfortable walking to my local tube station in nothing but my undies? I’m not sure I would – and I doubt many other people I know are either, unless they happen to have been blessed with Hollywood legs.

Whichever way you spin it, the rise of the no-pants trend is a bleak indictment of the way the fashion industry is becoming less – and not more – inclusive. And I’m getting increasingly fed up with people pretending otherwise. The industry did at least try to give body diversity a go for a bit; there was a time when designers were constantly asked about it, pressured to make a change. But with the exception of casting a few token plus-size models in some of the more progressive shows, all of it seems to have fallen by the wayside a little.

In the last few years, along with the rise of Ozempic, we’ve seen a worrying return to size-zero culture, with very few plus-size models walking at fashion month (28 out of 4,000 models walked the runway at Paris Fashion Week in October, according to data collated by Felicity Hayward, the model and #IncludingTheCurve campaigner). It coincides with the uptick of early Noughties fashion trends, harking back to a time when “heroin chic” was the ultimate style statement.

This hasn’t gone without criticism: back in February, New York Times fashion director Vanessa Friedman called it out at one particular show, tweeting: “Even I am distracted by the extreme skinniness of many of the models in Jason Wu’s show #NYFW”.

This is all very well and good. But not enough people are speaking up, putting pressure on designers and casting agents to invoke any kind of meaningful change. Perhaps the proliferation of this knicker trend is a symptom of this lack of action. I fear it won’t be the last one.