Low Rise, High Stakes: A History of Butt Cleavage in Fashion

Words: Juliette Eleuterio

When I was around 10 years old, I became utterly dumbfounded after seeing actress Mirelle Darc in an elegant, backless, down to the butt, black dress in the French film Le Grand Blond avec une Chaussure Noire (1972). How could an ass crack, a body part I only knew exposed as a plumber’s habitual transgression, become the object of my infatuation? Not long after, I was once again confronted by this conflicting notion after being faced with Monica Belluci’s bare butt poking out in Asterix & Obelix: Mission Cleopatra (2002).

Life went on, and my unanswered internal question of “why is breast cleavage normalised but its rear counterpart chastised?” eventually faded out of my consciousness. That was until I stumbled upon the infamous bumster fit trouser, and all my childhood memories of barely-showing bare-cheek attire came flooding back. I thought “there must be something there” — spoiler alert, there is.

From ancient Greece to Ming dynasty China, all the way to the Renaissance period, the bare buttocks have been the subject of many traditional artists’ fascinations. While portraits which only reveal the upper half of the rear fold do exist, they are few and far between in comparison to their full-fledged bare-cheek peers. This is due to a number of factors, cultural and societal — the Romans had Praxiteles brazenly sculpting the ideal human form of the times, and Peter Paul Rubens’ The Judgement of Paris is a sign of the sensuous Baroque times, depicting the rear view as a sign of divine love and beauty.

In his seminal work Ways of Seeing (1972), art critic John Berger states “In the tradition of Western art, the nude has always been a symbol.” He argues that, in contrast, photography “exposes the human form in a way that can feel more direct and less symbolic.” That, toppled with the fact that a post-Victorian society swung the conservative way, makes for a far more interesting discourse of the butt cleavage in the 20th century. 

Early pioneers, such as Man Ray, who found themselves at the intersection of photography and fashion played an integral role in the history of the crack. In June of 1924, Parisian magazine Littérature published Le Violon d’Ingres (translating to Ingres’ Violin), an image capturing model Kiki de Montparnasse from the back, revealing the upper part of her buttocks. Etched in the Surrealist art history books, one cannot ignore the intentionally subtle sensuous nature of the portrait.

In the following decades, George Platt Lynes practiced sexual restraint in his homoerotic artistry, playing with lighting and angles to reveal more or less the front and rear erogenous zones of the male body. A predecessor to Robert Mapplethorpe, known for his exploration of masculine sexuality via Polaroid, he often depicted the butt cleavage — although this was arguably the least risqué of Mapplethorpe’s chosen subjects to point and shoot. The captured uncovered butt also manifested itself in 80s underground queer clubs, where fetishistic low-slung trousers were a staple, before trickling down into the glossy pages of fashion’s most glamorous publications. 

During the 70s and 80s, Helmut Newton became the industry’s photographer du jour, thanks to a catalogue of imagery which captured the nude, both fully and partially. It was an artistic approach that proved erotic material could maintain a sense of class and elegance, a style also embraced by Ellen von Unwerth. Most famously, the German photographer captured Claudia Schiffer’s fissure in a 1991 editorial for Vogue, adding a feminine touch to the revelation of what has always been kept behind closed drawers.

“How could an ass crack, a body part I only knew exposed as a plumber’s habitual transgression, become the object of my infatuation?”

The fact that fashion magazines were associating themselves with such provocative imagery was a foreboding premonition. Yet, butt cleavage remained a snap shot of a moment, a pose in a photograph, or a scene in a film. That was until Alexander McQueen’s Autumn/Winter 1993 “Taxi Driver” collection and his creation of the bumster, a trouser silhouette which sits low on the waist and reveals part of the intergluteal cleft. The designer later admitted to The Guardian he wanted to elongate the torso, and reveal “the lower part of the spine” as it “is the most erotic area of the body.”

“The bumster is an easy to understand example of how Lee McQueen combined actual technical skill with provocation,” explains Founder and Editor-in-Chief of archival fashion platform Byronesque, Gill Linton. “His brand thrived when his designs did both,” she goes on to tell me. Indeed, the bumster forced its wearer (or viewer) to face conflicting notions of the beauty with the gaudy. 

Of course, it wasn’t long until the bumster’s trailblazing fire lit up the runways of many Houses. To put it simply, post 1993, “lots of designers show a bit of tits and arse,” according to Linton. Thierry Mugler gave us more than just a peak at the crack in his Autumn/Winter 1995 Couture collection, with a lower-backless black gown, adorned with strings of white pearls, and Tom Ford’s steamy Gucci gave us the double-G thong that screamed “my crack is right there, can you tell?” As John Matheson from online archive @mcqueen_vault, puts it: “The eventual trickle-down may not have been to the extent of [McQueen’s] most extreme trousers, but his low waist eventually pushed the consumer’s eye and the zeitgeist everywhere.”

Sure, the ultra-low rise fit of trousers became the trend of 00s fashion, but the peep of the cleft was still considered a fashion faux pas. Take, for example, Rose McGowan’s 1998 VMA red carpet look, consisting of a Maja beaded dress which showed more than just a slither of her backside split. For the Charmed actress, it was a way of regaining control over her body, as she later explained in a 2020 interview. But for the vulturous press, it became a free-for-all buffet of cynicism, ranging from a top spot on the worst-dressed list to outright slut-shaming. 

With the recent revival of Y2K fashion, butt cleavage has re-entered the zeitgeist after the 2010s high-waisted agenda. Diesel plagued its Autumn/Winter 2025 runway with denim iterations of the bumster, and Zoë Kravitz wore a cheeky Saint Laurent outfit of the night at this year’s Oscars after-party. Bianca Censori, too, recently went bare on the GRAMMYs red carpet, sending the internet on a rampage, ranging from discomfort to genuine outrage due to her alleged lack of agency in picking the outfit which, some assume, was the doing of her husband Ye, formerly known as Kanye West.

So, could butt cleavage become the new it accessory? Well, the chances that Suzy from HR shows up to work in an original Alexander McQueen bumster are slim to none, but the media’s recent reaction to Kravitz’ number may indicate a change in winds in opinions on denuding the derrière. As for the general public though, one Redditor’s simple response sums up its outlook on the matter pretty distinctively: “Well one is clearly a lot less sanitary than the other, all else being equal.”