About 18 months ago I was reading that the newest thing in women’s trousers was silver. Marks & Spencer received especially rave notices. (A pair of M&S silver trousers is shown the home page.) I could see that this made sense in more than one way. Obviously they could cut a striking look because as a colour silver evokes glamour. But it is also remarkably adaptable: there is no colour of sweater or top that could not be worn with said trousers.

You may be aware that in one of his latest crazy episodes Elon Musk has suggested that some gold has gone missing from Fort Knox, the facility in Kentucky where much of America’s bullion is stored. Who knows where that one’s headed, but catwalk observers have noticed that, at least for now, gold is giving way to silver when it comes to fashion, whether this be as regards jewellery or clothing. The recent Oscar’s ceremony was very much a case in point.

Demi Moore, favourite to win the award for best actress until she was thwarted by Mikey Madison, wore a silver gown by Giorgio Armani. Also clad in some form of silver somewhere about their person were Felicity Jones (pictured above, also in Armani), Emma Stone (French House), Selena Gomez (Ralph Lauren) and Halle Berry (Christian Siriano).

Of course, if the colour du jour were not silver, it would be flesh – as in skin. At the Brit Awards last week, Charli XCX collected a handful of accolades while wearing a sheer black dress that apparently caused complaints to be made to ITV about the fact that it made a point of emphatically displaying her nipples. The nearly-naked look also got some…er, exposure at the Grammys in February when Kanye West’s girlfriend was…er, dressed in a pretty much totally invisible dress. In a piece in Vogue earlier this year about ‘naked dressing’, the creative director of Dior described her latest creations as “demonstrating how clothing is a receptacle that affirms cultural, aesthetic and social codes”.

I think that sentence should go straight into ‘Pseuds Corner’ in Private Eye.