Has anyone else noticed how quickly erogenous zones go in and out of fashion these days? One minute we're told it's all about the lower back and set about wearing gowns so low they tickle our tail bones and threaten to expose our plumber's cleavage: a zone that, despite an ever-shifting landscape of body hot spots, has never been considered sexy. Then the next, we're told a cleavage of Grand Canyon proportions is the most powerful tool of seduction.

But no sooner have we forked out for a brassiere that not only pads and plumps our bosom into a pair of perfectly ripe and rounded melons but also squeezes them together and thrusts them up under the chin, than the body part de rigueur suddenly shifts to side boob and we're told to ditch our bras altogether and literally let it all hang out.

How's a woman supposed to know which is the season's fashionable, exposable body part? Is toe cleavage in or out this week? It's not as if we have a Gourmet Traveller-type list of the body's top 10 hot spots each season. It makes choosing between a holiday in Montenegro or Qatar look easy.

Of course, erogenous zones have flitted in and out of fashion since the beginning of time - just not quite as quickly as they do today. A consequence, of course, of the ever-increasing pace of fast fashion where wearing a jumpsuit fashioned from purple parachute silk is perfectly acceptable one day and could you make you a laughing stock the very next.

In the 19th century, for example, it merely took a well-turned ankle to set a man's heart racing. By the 1960s it took an entire leg. In between, erogenous zones have shifted back and forth between the foot and the nape of the neck, stopping at almost every other part of the female anatomy, with the exception, to the best of my knowledge, of the armpits.

More recently, sexually charged body parts have included the midriff - in the early '90s; the biceps - in the mid-noughties, courtesy of Madonna's man-of-steel arms; and the upper pubis - a consequence of the trend for low rise jeans, which also saw the birth of the muffin top.

This season, however, it's all about the shoulders. But just one of them. Both here and overseas, designers, have deemed the shoulder this year's exotic focus.

Channelling the toga-draped goddesses of Homer's Iliad, designers have twisted and draped flowing silks into one-shouldered creations fit for a modern-day Aphrodite.

Carolina Herrera, Herve Leger, Balmain, Tracy Reese and Halston were among the international labels to show off one-shouldered goddess gowns. Meanwhile, local labels including Kirrily Johnston, Saba and Lisa Ho are among those whipping up asymmetric gowns for women wanting to flaunt this season's hottest erogenous zone - this week's, at least.