As I got dressed for a birthday party in Bushwick on a Saturday night, my boyfriend and I glanced at each other in a state of mutual apprehension. It had been a long week and we were hungry and not all that young. The Brooklyn neighborhood was not near. Then I pulled on a white Mugler babydoll T-shirt, studded with rings approximating nipple piercings, and we both perked up.
In the yard of the party, a beautiful young woman who had moved to New York only a month ago admired the look. “Well, nipples are most desirable when they’re pointing up at a 45-degree angle,” she told us officiously.
Lately, it seems as if everyone has an opinion on this most familiar feature of womanhood. The fall shows exposed nipples all over: In New York, Christian Siriano surrounded them with tulle and visible boning, while in Milan model Amelia Gray, walking for Dsquared2, wore an opulent sheer gown descending into maximalist feathers. In Paris, Alaïa sent models down the runway in what looked like fishnet shirts and see-through stocking-like tops. And then at Cannes, naked dresses were formally banned, but Charli XCX wore a translucent lilac YSL one not quite transparent enough to contravene the new rules.
The big spectacle of last season, though, was from Duran Lantink, now creative director at Jean Paul Gaultier and carrying on that house’s lineage of arresting iconography. At a Paris show full of kitsch, drama, and distended body shapes, what caught the world’s eye was Lantink’s sizable silicone chest plate, worn by male model Chandler Frye. Some loved the camp theatricality, others saw it as a kind of sneer. Was it drag—a creative tribute to heightened womanhood—or an uncomfortable joke?
Elsewhere, subtler investigations have been taking place. The young designer Nensi Dojaka has made a name for herself in recent years with her lingerie-inspired tops and dresses, which can look as though delicate bralettes and underwire have been placed on the exterior of the garment. “This interplay speaks to a contrast between presence and absence. It’s a visual and tactile duality that only structures like corsets and boning can embody,” she told me. At the fall 2025 Valentino show, a public bathroom was the perfect stage for a collection that played with secrecy and revelation: a shimmering satin bra and high-waist underwear represented a thrilling confluence of fit and unfit for the public gaze. Most striking was a full-length see-through gown worn with a playfully baby-girl pink satin skirt. The model, an older woman with white hair loosely pulled back, reminded me how rare it is to see exposed breasts once they have passed a certain age.
“In the ’80s and before that, undergarments were very specifically not to be seen,” says fashion historian Natalie Nudell. “Historically, it was really seen as not proper.” Since the fall of Roe v. Wade, she notes, there has been a lot of backlash against female and sexual empowerment. However, “women’s fashion has almost become more sexualized, but in a way that’s not necessarily looking toward the male gaze.”
All this is taking place against a confusing and sometimes contradictory cultural backdrop. On the one hand, there is the cleavage-friendly “boom boom” aesthetic ascendant in conservative circles, far from the modest, matronly twinsets and bouclé knits worn by foremothers like Phyllis Schlafly. On the other side, there’s a movement toward the small and subtle. Breast reductions have increased by about 65 percent since 2019, and those who are seeking augmentation are no longer necessarily looking to go bigger. “The trend currently is for smaller boobs—I’ve heard them called yoga boobs, ballet-body boobs—and for removal of breast implants” says plastic surgeon Niki Christopoulos, MD. It’s no surprise the trend is being given monikers related to fitness. More women are actively invested in athleticism than they once were, and what some are now seeking is aligned with that aim. “Media trends back in the ’90s were toward a fuller chest,” Lyle Leipziger, MD, a plastic surgeon for over 25 years, told me. “Now there’s a trend toward staying in shape, to exercising—and there are also all the semaglutide medications.” In this context, increased interest in smaller breasts may be less about ease of movement or rejecting an assumed male preference and more part of a revived fixation on thinness.
There has also been a sea change in how actresses are treated when they reveal their breasts on camera. In 2003, when Meg Ryan bared all for In The Cut, some saw it as the start of her unraveling; modesty was mandated to keep sacred the untouchable aura of the A-list actress. The 1995 flop Showgirls seemed to single-handedly demolish Elizabeth Berkley’s career, her omnipresent breasts as much the focus of snide derision as the movie’s hysterical plot. But more recently, Emma Stone in Poor Things and Mikey Madison in Anora (not to mention Nicole Kidman in Babygirl) were hailed as having delivered generational performances. It seems that the decision to reveal one’s breasts is now credited as a plausible part of how an artist chooses to perform.
Was it possible, I wondered, to play in this evolving and yet somehow predetermined space? I thought of that Mugler shirt, but also the surprisingly wearable bullet bras Miuccia Prada put forth at her Paris Miu Miu show last spring. Beneath thin knits and fur stoles, their old-world, antiquated femininity was comforting, familiar, but invigorating also. Mrs. Prada spoke of a balm for difficult times; true, but those pronounced points also signal the need for a certain bravado to endure them.
Heading home to visit my family in a small town in Ireland, I was far from anywhere I could procure a Miu Miu anything. But as in all good small towns, there is a long-established, old-fashioned lingerie shop where I managed to find a decent approximation. I had not been in this store since I was a teenager, grappling with a slew of opposing demands which were barely legible. The space between frigid and promiscuous was minuscule; thin was good, it was commonly agreed, but it was bad to have no breasts. If you were not slim, breasts could act as a sort of apology for your failing. I was not especially slender, and had small breasts, and after one preteen experiment with bra-stuffing I resigned myself to generally ignoring them.
Wearing a bullet bra now, in my mid-30s, I was astonished by how well suited a garment it is for women with breasts like mine, which are neither one thing nor the other. Not quite a 45-degree angle, but nonetheless a definite shift upward, crucially, in a way that doesn’t suggest the attempt to mimic a younger woman’s body. I felt sexy, put-together, and, as the name lends itself, well protected.
“You look like my mother,” my own mother said as I adjusted my sweater.
“I know!” I said admiringly.
In a sense, all trends to do with body parts are inevitably incoherent on an individual level simply because of the enormous variance in our body types. We have the breasts we have, whether they are in style or not. While I’ve long since shed any sense of internal disappointment generated in my teenage years, there was something undeniably exciting about wearing the Mugler shirt, something that announced my breasts with intention, humble as they are. “The whole story of the house has been about celebrating the human form and reexploring shapes,” the managing director of Mugler, Adrian Corsin, told me.
Later that same evening as the Bushwick party, I tried the Mugler shirt with a red vinyl skirt; the high waist came to a point just below my ribs, lest the faux piercings not be attention-seeking enough. I was surprised by how defined and pronounced the shape of my body was. It was nice to see; when I am anything above a universally accepted state of slimness I have a tendency to retreat into men’s shirts and loose slacks. There’s nothing wrong with comfort or utility, but it was cheering to remind myself I’m still in there. I thought about how a piece of clothing like this could indeed help women who want to celebrate the breasts they love and are proud of, but also us women who had half forgotten they had breasts at all.
In this story: Hair, Akki using Dyson; makeup, Kabuki for Dior Beauty; manicurist, Honey. Produced by Ted Jane Productions. Set Design: Stefan Beckman. Chair by Chris Rucker.