In this very on-brand April, where sun and showers jostle for supremacy and a chill wind is making 16C feel like 9C, you might have spotted pointelle popping up everywhere. On her recent world tour, Rosalía appeared on stage in Paris wearing a pointelle bodysuit. Then Sabrina Carpenter appeared on the cover of Perfect magazine hanging backwards off a bed wearing cyan eyeshadow and a pointelle underwear set. It’s peeping out from underneath shirts and jumpers in air-conditioned offices and on buses. For spring, the heritage knitwear brand Herd is offering “featherlight yet warm” jumpers in its signature pointelle. John Lewis, which said yesterday that online searches for pointelle were up 60% week on week, is selling bandana-scarves and pyjamas made of the same material.

The fabric, more associated with girls’ vests, thermal-wear and underwear, is, according to Merriam-Webster, “an openwork design (as in knitted fabric) typically in the shape of chevrons”. Sometimes peppered with hearts, florals, diamonds or zigzags instead, you probably had a pair of pointelle ankle socks, possibly with a little cotton ruffle. Or maybe you remember that era in the 00s when Whistles churned out lacey pointelle camisoles that grazed bellybuttons inches above Juicy Couture track bottoms.

Today, Hailey Bieber wears it on cutesy crop tops, and brands such as Cou Cou Intimates, where sales of pointelle items have grown 150% year over year, and Leset and are almost synonymous with it. Carpenter wore Cou Cou for her Perfect shoot, which was styled by British stylist Katie Grand.

For Aurora Benson, womenswear buying manager at John Lewis, “pointelle is no longer just for lounging”. She charts its resurgence as “a move on from the cottagecore and grandpacore aesthetics of previous years. Its delicate lace-like texture leans into a vintage nostalgia while offering modern technical functionality.”

It’s also ideal for in-between weather. According to Bridget Dalton, a semiotician and cultural analyst at Truth Consulting, “pointelle garments code this really amazing tension between warm and cold … it’s interesting to wear something that’s inherently about warmth and cosiness … on a sunny day”. That “sort of exposed but comforted feeling” could read, she says, “almost like the antidote to Brat”.

The trend started picking up when the designer JW Anderson sent models wearing pointelle vests and knickers down his catwalk in 2024 – his most recent drop features a Pepto-Bismol-pink pointelle co-ord. More recently, on the Loewe catwalk, American designers Lazaro Hernandez and Jack McCollough showed V-neck pointelle dresses in vivid yellows, reds and blues.

It sings of nostalgia – all candy floss and crayons – and that may be what’s making it so palatable right now. According to Cou Cou Intimates founder Rose Colcord, it feels right because “culturally, people are craving nostalgia and familiarity, especially with how fast the world is changing”. For her, there’s an appealing innocence and lack of self-consciousness about pointelle: “It reminds you of being a kid in a way, when you weren’t worried about other people’s opinions or how you should dress.”

But there’s more nuance to it. Worn by grown women, it begins to signal something more subversive. At Cou Cou, the pointelle thong is one of the brand’s bestselling items.

Dalton thinks there’s “something very provocative about basic underwear on adult bodies”. She points to Kristen Stewart’s Rolling Stone cover where she’s wearing Y-fronts, “which feels very provocative because it’s playing with gender, but it’s also playing with underwear that’s deliberately designed not to be provocative in a context where it is coded as provocative.” The paradox is the provocation.

It’s no surprise that pointelle has been reached for at heightened moments of tension, sexual rivalry and heartbreak. In the weeks after the debut of Lily Allen’s revenge album, West End Girl, she revenge-dressed her way round various red carpets, wearing a John Galliano-era Dior dress in black pointelle to the premiere of the Hunger Games stage show in London. The neck was high and the sleeves were long, but the fabric’s holes still revealed a lot.

“If grownup sexuality is coded by spandex, sequins, Lurex, even latex – these hard, shiny fabrics that restrict and contort the body and push things forward – the blanket-like quality of pointelle, the softness, the stretchiness, is the antidote to that,” says Dalton. “It has that kind of feeling of being cosseted … while you’re also still showing your body.”

For those looking for something sexy without compromising on comfort, that will be a welcome plot twist. But, warns Dalton, if you’re not careful it does raise an uncomfortable question: “Has the tradwife movement infiltrated my knicker drawer?”

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