Pretty Little Thing: I try to get my head around modern fashion

I have been walking past this advert on the London Underground on my way to work every day for months now and, quite frankly, it's been confusing me.

What is going on here? What exactly is going on with this young lady's trousers? There seem to be bits missing. I'm not bringing this up out of prudishness, you understand. I'm all for women being able to flash as much skin as they feel inclined to. I'm always happy to see fetishwear, for example, influencing mainstream fashions. It appeals to both my inner kinkster and my inner goth.

But this particular outfit looks so very impractical. There's gaps and chains and stuff. How on earth do you get it on? How, more importantly, do you go to the toilet when you're wearing it?

So in the spirit of scientific investigation, I have researched exactly what is going on here. And am happy to share it with all of you in case any of you have been walking past the same poster and wondering the same thing.

This outfit comes from the PrettyLittleThing Ashanti range and you'll be pleased to know that this isn't just one complicated garment with difficult to navigate leg-holes. The model here is wearing four separate items. Plus a hat.

So breaking it all down, we have:

A crop top...

Bikini bottoms

A belt

And chaps.

The chaps are clearly what makes this outfit a bit special. They're basically a pair of trousers for people to want to avoid that tedious crotch-covering business that usually comes with trouserwear.

The fact that they're being teamed with bikini bottoms suggests that this is beach/poolside-wear. Something to pull over your swimsuit once you've got out of the water. Let's face nothing says "relaxing by the pool in hot weather" quite like a pair of 95% Polyester 5% Elastane skin-hugging leg coverings.

I'm just showing my age here, though. Clearly nobody would be buying this outfit for comfort in mind. It's all about the visuals. And the view of the outfit from the back does show a very arresting visual indeed.

So there you go. While I was spending the summer commuting to work on the hot, sweaty Waterloo & City line, the hotels of Ayia Napa, Magaluf and Malia were no doubt full of young people showing off interesting framed bits of themselves in coordinating snakeprint.

Good for them. Just hope they remembered their sun block.