It seems only yesterday that one could justify spending several water-cooler moments a day comparing the best means to achieve maximum breast exposure while safeguarding against total wardrobe malfunction (tit tape, if anyone is still interested). Yet here we are debating how much ankle to reveal. What is this? A universal yearning to return to modesty? Or is it just that we all want to give a new trouser length a go?

Desmond Morris, were he to turn his mind to the considerable subject of lacy vs opaque tights, would probably argue that this is a clear-cut case of sexual evolution. Or, put another way, once you’ve almost seen Jennifer Lopez’s pubic hair, you need a period of 80-denier tights to correct the pendulum swing. If it seems unfair to single out JLo, now that she is a Mother of Twins Who Doesn’t Officially Have a Nanny, I can only say that she brought it on herself when she wore her cleavage, navel and not much else unless you count That Versace Dress, to the Grammys in 2000. That Versace Dress, you may recall, was so explicit it made That Other Versace Dress, as worn by Elizabeth Hurley, look like something a mother superior might reject as too staid. It seemed like some kind of apotheosis of skimpiness at the time. And so it proved. We’ve been clawing back a sense of decorum ever since.

Now it has come to this: the current Look is a poloneck, a long jacket or blanket coat, a pair of ankle boots – and the aforementioned glimpse of ankle. There was so little flesh revealed on the catwalks that those teensy flashes of bare skin betwixt shoe boot and lower calf began to look almost erotic. To edit Cole Porter somewhat, this is really quite shocking.

It is also an improvement on those winters when it was de rigueur to go bare-legged in a skirt. Bare legged in trousers isn’t nearly so chilly. Those few centimetres of naked skin certainly seem to add a seductiveness to outfits that might otherwise seem oppressively covered up. At any rate, during Paris Fashion Week, the only way to wear cropped trousers was with bare ankles.

However, I see trouble ahead. What if it gets really cold? What if your shoe boots rub your feet until they resemble steak tartare? OK, six solutions (talk about value for money): Phillip Lim showed models with very sheer black tights and trousers; at Louis Vuitton, the tights were less sheer, but still black; at YSL, they were categorically, opaquely black; and at Marni they were stripey. I know: tights under trousers – what a turn-off. So here are two more thoughts: thick woolly socks you can turn down over the tops of your ankle boots, or trainer socks that you can wear inside them without anyone knowing. Not sexy, but better than steak tartare.

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