(The Age)
Updated: 2007-08-18 11:18

Every so often, fashion cracks and heaves like an Arctic iceberg, shedding trends that have clung on too long and picking up new ones - like the knicker-flashing micro-mini - that are cunningly ill-suited to all but its core market of 16 to 24-year-olds.

We know when fashion is overdue for such a gargantuan bout of cracking and heaving by certain not-so-subtle signs. For example, when noticeable numbers of middle-aged mums cluster, as they have in recent years, along fashion's razor edge, wearing pointy-toed calf boots, drum-tight hip-slung jeans, belly-button bling and tattoos.

It is when mothers and teens begin to dress creepily alike, that fashion says "No!" by simply breaking off the offending trends and fitting in new ones even more violently ill-suited to older temperaments and body types.

Like the micro-mini, knicker-flasher frock.

It's cut short and boxy or bulbous to accentuate legs and conjures a silhouette not unlike a lollipop or pumpkin-on-sticks.

Spring's knicker-flasher hemlines stop three fingers or fewer short of a girl's underpants and are cut wide or A-line enough to accentuate and optically "slim" the legs.

And, while these are all fine and dandy points for any woman tuned to her sexual allure - be warned - this is a look exclusively suited to girls on the sunrise side of 25.

Commentators are already predicting this will be the new "muffin top"; in other words, a trend adopted by every girl no matter her technical drawbacks.

Bless them all. This is fashion as it should be.

The boxiest "lollipop" and "pumpkin-on-sticks" frocks have the advantage of disguising a girl's figure anyway, albeit, the top bits, waist and bum. Only the legs and knicker-flasher-factor could be tricky for the self-conscious.

LifewithBird solves it by popping bike shorts on underneath. Marnie Skillings and a caseload of other designers suggest leggings. And then, there are opaque tights, cropped trousers, slim-leg jeans.

Feel free to snip this tip list of "Ways to wear the lollipop". But, hide it from mum.