I THOUGHT those low-slung jeans that exposed men’s underwear were bad enough, but I was wrong.

Men’s fashions have plumbed new depths with the moob tube. Inspired by the female boob tube, this taut band of cloth that clings to the chest is being sold for £15 by the fashion chain ASOS.

It looks like a surgical truss. I’m thinking of getting one for my husband in case he develops a hernia.

The boob tube for women is bad enough. They only look good on about one per cent of the female population, yet women of all sizes roll them on, pushing any skin that isn’t as taut as a drum up and over. Tube tops celebrate the breasts, which is one thing when you’re young and supple, but quite another when everything is beginning to sag.

But men are entirely the wrong shape for a tube across the chest. Muscular V-shaped bodies won’t support it and anyone with a beer belly will look like a sumo wrestler.

For designers, men’s fashions can’t be an easy nut to crack. Trousers, shorts, shirts, T-shirts and jackets…practical and functional. There isn’t a great deal of variation.

Maybe that’s why they occasionally take inspiration from female fashions. But why pick the very worst of them?

A crop top for men recently hit the high street. On women, these unflattering garments, a staple of the 1980s, only look good if you’re of Kate Moss proportions. Anyone with so much as an ounce of surplus fat - even if it’s under the armpits - can’t get away with it.

I remember trying to discourage both my daughters - each slim and trim - from wearing crops tops, but as is the done thing with parental fashion advice, I was ignored.

In male circles, only ballet dancers should be seen in this sort of attire.

Then there’s the man thong. Following the widespread take-up by women, there was a time in the late 1980s when males across the country began ditching boxer shorts to don Italian gigolo-style g-strings, eliminating their VPL.

Thankfully, my husband did not go down that road, preferring to stick with the heavy duty hessian Y-fronts I buy for him.

While their popularity has waned, man thongs have not entirely gone out of fashion. Researching these grotesque contraptions online, I came across one on eBay, with the disturbing description ‘used’ beneath it.

If men are adopting the worst of our fashions, maybe it won’t be long before we see blokes stepping out in those awful T-shirts with cut-out shoulders. They are hugely popular, but I have yet to see any woman on who one is flattering.

In the fast-moving world of fashion, there is always the possibility that women will begin adopting the most hideous of men’s fashions. Being a bit of a slob I quite like the idea of not pulling my trousers up properly when I get dressed on a morning. I’m not so sure, however, about letting the world and his wife see my giant Bridget Jones-style knickers.

There has been the odd copycat triumph in the male/female world of fashion. The man bag. For years, unless they were going fishing, men wouldn’t be seen dead with a bag, preferring to cram their money, fags and whatever else they were carrying, into their trouser pockets. Then they woke up and realised that it makes sense to have something more secure to cart stuff around in.

While the moob will undoubtedly look as revolting on blokes as it does on women, I can’t wait to see one. I wait with baited breath for the first sighting on Broadway (that’s Bradford, not New York…)