CLEAN SWEEP: The shift to tank tops is as smooth as pre-washed denims

Time and again, female fashion needs to renew and reinvent itself through a shift in anatomical focus. That's because couturiers always view the body as a voyeuristic enigma that should never reveal its secrets all at once and that concealment must be balanced with new and imaginative tracts of exposure. Some of the earlier epidermal highlights have been thighs, cleavages, clavicles, earlobes, armpits, abdomens and even less appealing areas like the lower shin and ankle (that's when shoes-without-socks became sexy). The current hotspot is the midriff and the lower abdomen, not to mention what is being picturesquely called "butt cleavage", the cleft that results from the rounded gradience of gluteal muscles and the underlying structures of the posterior.

Low rider jeans and short tops are creating this double exposure. When the pants drag down and the buttock buoys up, the apex of this fleshly fissure become visible just above the belt. As a result strategic tattoos and peeping G-strings have also become fashionable.

BOTTOMS UP: Butt cleavage is preferred for strategic tattoos

Showing the back and midriff is really nothing new in India and, as Mumbai-based Monisha Jaising, a leading exponent of butt couture, suggests, women here would adapt to it more easily than the well-known frontal cleavage. There has always been the sari and its numerous parochial cousins-like the Keralite mundamveshthi, the Assamese mekhla-chadar and the Gujarati ghaghra-choli-that have already emboldened Indian women for generations, so the urban transition to low riders and short tops becomes as smooth as pre-washed denim.

Jaising, whose low waist peek-a-boo pants impressed commentators at the first fdci Fashion Week in 2000, says the exposure has another technical advantage, one that is bound to further increase its popularity. "It makes you look slimmer," she says, "because the torso-and the body-ends up looking longer. If the tummy and the back come under waist-high trousers it creates much more heaviness."

DOUBLE EXPOSURE: Designers say the new look makes you look slimmer

Girls have now adopted this method of looking slim, consciously or unconsciously, everywhere-in pubs, restaurants or fashion promenades like Park Street in Kolkata, M-Block market in Delhi's Greater Kailash Part I or Nungambakkam High Road in Chennai. Meenakshi Bhatia, a 22-year-old Delhi-based mba student, says she doesn't mind getting bold at the bottom because "it looks fashionable and everyone is wearing low stuff anyway". Priyanka Daftry, 19, studying at Delhi's Jesus and Mary College, says she lowered her normal waist length when she found that many denim suppliers only had variety in the low rise section. Pooja Sharma, a 22-year-old model, has got two types of pants-one for the day that tries not to give much away and a more accommodating cut for the night. "My back and midriff shows but I stopped being conscious of it a long time ago," she says, "I'm just a part of the crowd."

The preferred location to view the new skin flick is the bar stool, earlier considered a male stronghold but now entering the new era in unisex seating. At Djinns at the Hyatt Regency in Delhi or Tantra in The Park in Kolkata, bar stools are now lined with women in low-slung pants and square décolletages, sipping festooned cocktails and making sure their stomachs don't move when they laugh. The legs are crossed and the posture upright since there's a tricky line between beauty and bawdiness.

The rise of the butt cleavage and the midriff is directly related to the lowering of the ladies trousers in the West, about 2-4 inches less than what was earlier acceptable. The resulting construction was called a low rider or a hipster. East Londoner Alexander McQueen, the bad boy of the fashion who once got amputees on the ramp, probably its heralded entry through what he called "bumsters" in the 1990s claiming that these "elongated the back and created a titillating cleavage". In early 2000, stars like Britney Spears, Jennifer Lopez and Charlize Theron began showing off their toned midriffs and what were earlier defamed as the risqué regions of the bum. Sharon Stone was also a blithe victim of this trend, appearing at the Oscars in a cut-out dress that exposed bits of the butt. Soon it became even difficult to find jeans that would shelter the hipbone and the pelvis.

Like Jaising, other Indian designers have also been making necessary changes to accommodate the trend in India. Malini Ramani, who has now shifted base to Goa, is designing her jeans at least two inches lower than she did last year and they're selling faster than she can make them. "People are keeping their bodies in better shape," she says, "and they want an opportunity to show it off." Rina Dhaka, always a great votary of the skin, has designed a range of low riders that she would be showing at the India Fashion Week in August and says that anything that goes below the waist is really hot, in particular the Brazilian jeans with a 4-inch zipper. Aparna Chandra owes the butt cleavage's popularity to its "alluring sexiness" and has also designed a whole line of low pants in denim that are rich in rivets and supplementary stitching. Along with rivets, such jeans or pants are also emblazoned with applique, threadwork, studs, glitter and other accessories that blend cleavage with cloth.

That's not all. Levi's fastest item for women is the Red Tab 567, a low rider denim that comes in a variety of distressed shades. Lee, Lee Cooper, Pepe and tens of other common and couture brands have made the style pivotal to their retail regimen, apart from more expensive designer brands. As sales boom, the waist is bound to dip to even more (dangerously) low levels. And Britney Spears will decide when the slide is to stop.