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Bullet bras, breast reductions, nipples aplenty—there's a whole new way to think about our chests.

- Megan Nolan

NEW WAVE There is an old-world femininity to the bullet bra but also a certain contemporary bravado. Delilah Belle in Miu Miu. Amelia Gray in Prada. Both wear Tiffany & Co. necklaces. Hair, Akki using Dyson; makeup. Kabuki for Dior Beauty. Details, see In This Issue. Fashion Editor: Patti Wilson.

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.