Cleavage is making a comeback - flaunt your overflowing cups with pride, writes Hilary Rose

CURVILICIOUS, and as magnificent as nature intended, breasts are stealing the show this season. Time, then, to celebrate the return of the cleavage

Once upon a time, there was a fashion designer who said he didn't like breasts because they ruined the line of his clothes. I was enraged. I can't help suspecting that he might not be entirely heterosexual. But I've been vindicated: rejoice, sisters, because he is officially wrong, and breasts are officially back. It's the great bosom comeback of 2010. We can flaunt our overflowing cups with pride, secure in the knowledge that Fashionable People have given them the seal of approval.

Oh, please. Like we care. Breasts are a fact of life, not a trend. Mine never went away in all the years that flat-chested was in the ascendant. Designers choosing fried-egg models to stride down the runway is one thing - if that's how they want to present their clothes, that's up to them. But sweeping statements as to the general desirability, or fashionableness, of my God-given assets? I think not.

Personally, I'm buying into this season's clothes big time: what went down the catwalks in London and Paris for this season was the most wearable, womanly stuff imaginable. There was Laetitia Casta at Louis Vuitton in a tight-bodiced, full-skirted, '50s-style dress that squished and hoisted and celebrated her breasts magnificently.

Often, it wasn't what was revealed, more what was being covered up. Prada had dresses that framed the upper body with tiers of pretty ruffles. Miu Miu, Jason Wu, Antonio Berardi and Nina Ricci all went mad for womanly curves and, even better, used models who actually had some to prove it.

Prada even did the unthinkable and hired Victoria's Secret underwear models. These are girls whose lack of a visible skeleton usually earns them nothing but sneers from their couture counterparts, not a stroll down a Milanese catwalk. Pleasingly, they're the ones having the last laugh - a contracted Victoria's Secret model will earn far more than a jobbing couture clothes horse.

The key is to tread a careful line: boobs or legs, never both. And working a womanly trend could just mean a hint of bosom under a loosely buttoned shirt. Or they could be completely covered by a form-fitting sweater, while still being the star of the show.

Of course, no discussion of a trend like this would be complete without a nod to the US television programme Mad Men. What other programme has had such an effect on what goes down the catwalks and what we want to wear? One look at those '60s bosoms, wasp waists and full skirts and some women swooned and thought: "I want me some of that." We thought that about the men, too, but that's a different story.

The makers of the programme insisted that the actresses had to be the real deal, with real breasts, not toned gym bunnies with implants, which was probably a tall order in LA. But your average '60s housewife didn't have fake boobs, bulging biceps and a pancake-flat stomach from a diet of egg-white omelettes and yoga, so January Jones and Christina Hendricks got the gig, and with it the undying gratitude of curvy women everywhere.

Happy with them or not, the other reason to be cheerful is that this trend is about real breasts. We are all so, so over Victoria Beckham-style half-grapefruits. Breasts should move. They should be soft and yielding and have a visible relationship with each other, not with a bony ribcage. Most of us, including men, never understood the overtly fake look, and don't get me started on why anyone with a brain would have major surgery unless it was medically necessary.

Mere mortals can take comfort that it doesn't matter what size they are, the key thing is that they're real. Of course, we're all going to carry on moaning about them in the same way we moan about our legs or hips or bums. Smaller, bigger, perkier, rounder, we're never happy. But we live with it.

It seems only right to give the final word to the people who think about it most: men. A scientific survey of my straight male friends, which involved sitting in the pub and asking them, revealed that all of them, selflessly, would be interested in fondling a fake pair, just to see what they were like, but it was the real thing they wanted to come home to.

And when told that curvy is a key trend, one of them translated for his mates, their expressions sweetly fuddled by beer and all this talk of boobs. "You mean you're all going to be getting your t*ts out?" he asked. "Bloody brilliant." - © The Times, London