Who wears short shorts? Dudes, apparently

Interestingly, this trend does not seem to be limited just to da ladeez. Men, although by no means in the same numbers, are also shortening their shorts. Instead of relying on the usual British option of clownish cropped trousers, shorts are creeping up to the mid to upper thigh on men. I can't, sadly, blame Moss for this. Instead I can blame Cristiano Ronaldo, whose love of the male hotpant has shown no bounds on his tour of Los Angeles' finest nightclubs and pool loungers in recent weeks.

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".)

Similarly, at American Apparel sales have doubled from last summer but it is not just the cheaply cheerful high street: the designer fashion website www.netaporter.com is also selling plenty of short shorts this summer, despite the triple-figure price-tags, proving that British customers are seeing them as, to use some more fashion parlance, "an investment piece". A - speaking bluntly - bum-grazing blue pair by Roberto Cavalli for a mere £405 (now a bargain-bin £202.50 in the sale) has sold out in every size but one.