A message came to me through Line this morning: “Miley: what was she wearing; what fashion was that?” Although I have seen Ms Cyrus’s Video Music Awards performance on Youtube last night, it did not occur to me to ask those questions that appeared on my phone screen. As I detected a sense of urgency in the message, I thought it would be discourteous not to reply. I typed: “Was she wearing anything? If not, it couldn’t have been fashion”.

Seriously, what fashion was there in underwear the colour and texture of a blow-up sex doll? Latex can, of course, augment twerking’s blatant suggestion of coital frenzy, but Ms Cyrus’s bland costume—after the first one-piece was shed—underwhelmed in the tackiness of her stage antics. The bra-and-panty set was anti-Victoria’s Secret and more akin to those simplistically depicted on paper dolls, now so rarely seen that most viewers might even find ex-Hannah Montana’s get-up novel. Just as her stage partner-in-crime Robin Thicke’s song Blurred Lines offered a reductive take on girls and sex, Ms Cyrus—playing up to that—presented a down-to-naught expression of style.

Throughout most of her self-aware performance, she had her tongue ejected and her posterior protruded. Isn’t that what most of you remembered? So, what’s fashion got to do with it?