Ready To Wear: Editors take note... this look is flat rather than fat

Lady Gaga in the flat not fat (as the Mail Online suggested) look (REX FEATURES)

Today, with our collective consciousness so saturated with fashion imagery that it's sometimes difficult to give the best the attention they deserve, those that truly resonate are the ones that make you think long after they first appear and which merit revisiting time and again.

So it is with the photograph that first appeared at the end of last month of Lady Gaga in a current-season Comme des Garçons pink-and-blue felt dress.

I first became aware of the image in question on Mail Online (yes, resistance is futile), where it ran with the not-so-restrained headline: "Does my bum look big in this? Lady Gaga pokes fun at weight gain as she steps out in a bizarre fat-suit-style dress in Paris." Since then, the international collections have run their course and come to a close and, inevitably, said "bizarre fat-suit-style dress" – which is, in fact, flat, not fat at all – has exerted its influence as, it seems, everything courtesy of Comme des Garçons must, and has done for more than 30 years.

The cut in question, you see, has since cropped up for the forthcoming spring season on catwalks as diverse – and revered – as Maison Martin Margiela and Balenciaga. The amplification of the female form that is the garment's central message, meanwhile, was seen everywhere from Lanvin (where curvaceous nudes were printed on to fine silks) to Alexander McQueen, Christian Dior and MMM again, where an hourglass silhouette was exaggerated via structure and underpinnings in all its glory.

And how great is that? Never mind the actual shape of the woman within these clothes – that, to be sure, is her business and she may dress it up or down as she pleases. How great, though, that the future of fashion, for the time being at least, is celebratory where a woman's curves are concerned. Move over the skinny jeans and T-shirts that have dominated for so long now and that are, essentially, cut to fit a snake-hipped man. And bravo to Mesdames Gaga and the CdG designer Rei Kawakubo. The former is brave enough to show her millions of followers that creative brilliance may be both fragile and flawed, and the latter remains the greatest fashion inspiration of her time.