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‘Rebellious and subversive’: the rise of the new visible panty line

Charli xcx and Billie Eilish are latest to wear waistband of knickers or boxers higher than their trousers and skirts

Photograph: Victor Virgile/Gamma-Rapho/Getty Images“The boxer shorts ‘VPL’ was a conscious part” of the styling, says the costume designer Eric Daman, who has also worked on Sex and the City and Gossip Girl, “striking that unique, unexpected balance between masc and femme”. The fever continues with knickers under sheer dresses now peeping out – see the set of And Just Like That, where Sarah Jessica Parker was recently pictured in black undies beneath a translucent Simone Rocha design. Where Marky Mark famously clutching his crotch in a CK advert in the 90s was playing with archetypes of heterosexual masculinity, now, said Cole, “we’re seeing what might be seen as traditionally men’s underwear worn on cisgendered women or on people who are more fluid in their approaches to their gender and sexuality”.

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