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But not since the peek-a-boo era of transparent blouses with discarded bras in the Swinging Sixties has it ever been so … in your face.

I know this because the glossy fashion mags say so. And because strutting nipples were all over the catwalks at Paris Fashion Week last month, particularly the Miu Miu collection, a subsidiary of Prada, by Miuccia Prada. A year ago Miu Miu gave us the return of the micro-mini, scarcely more coverage than a belt. Definitely failed the bend-over test.

And it was Miuccia Prada who sent her flat-chested models glissading down the runway in Paris — pert nipples protruding like “shark fins’’ from beneath cashmere sweaters, as The Guardian’s Jess Cartner-Morley put it.

Visible and silhouetted nipples have quickly jumped the shark from atelier to street. Lila Moss, model spawn of supermodel Kate Moss, immediately stepped out in a sheer top that left nothing to the imagination, which is the point, I guess. There’s apparently a whole free-the-nipple movement afoot at the moment. In fact, there was already a decade-long Free the Nipple campaign in the U.S., to liberate them especially in states with explicit laws prohibiting exposed breasts — only the female variety of course — in public.

Ontario was way ahead of the curve. As a woman of a certain vintage myself, I well remember the tectonic plates cracking wide open when 19-year-old university student Gwen Jacob, deciding on a scorching hot summer day in 1991 to remove her top whilst strolling down a street in Guelph. Full frontal nudity. She was charged after a Mrs. Grundy complained to the cops, convicted of committing an indecent act, and fined $75.

The conviction was overturned five years later by the Court of Appeal, which ruled “there was nothing degrading or dehumanizing’’ about what Jacob did. “The scope of her activity was limited and was entirely non-commercial. No one who was offended was forced to continue to look.’’

So bosoms unsheathed are entrenched in Ontario law, though there was no sudden spate of them in stark-naked free swing. Still, that early-days victory for equality of the boobies, wrapped around second-generation feminism, in the wake of bra-burning protests, is a far cry from fashion diktats wrapped around the emancipated nipple.

I’m not sure what the frock any of this means for mipples — male nipples, which have never been held to sexist standards. But Justin Bieber did recently post a close-up photo of his on Instagram.

Simultaneous with this nipple revival — again, according to the fashion gospels — is the re-emergence of the bullet bra. These push-together and lift-up undergarments are basically bullet-upholstery for bosoms, underwired lingerie designed to induce cantilevered cleavage out of the flattest chests. Popularized in the ‘40s by Lana Turner and other pin-up icons, accentuating their embonpoint under clinging sweaters.

Mildly aggressive, I think, three decades after Coco Chanel had extricated women from corsets and other restrictive apparel. (And a decade before Christian Dior put women back in highly structured dresses with insanely cinched waists — The New Look.)

The July cover of Vogue has chanteuse Dua Lipa rocking a blush silk Miu Miu bullet bra by Prada. Yes, it was Miuccia, again, who reintroduced the bullet brassiere last autumn. Addressing fashion reporters backstage after that show, she mused: “What do we need, in this difficult moment for women — to lift us up?’’ and claimed the collection was about femininity.

Looks more like armour to me, antithesis of the comfortable sports bra that can also be worn as outerwear.

Even Kim Kardashian, who’s built an entrepreneurial empire off her spectacularly curvaceous backside, is pushing push-ups in her Skims lingerie brand, including a bra that features faux — latex — nipples. For the nipple underendowed? Kardashian promoted it thusly on social media: “Some days are hard, but these nipples are harder.’’

Madonna got there first with underwear as outerwear in her “Like A Virgin” epoch, then later uber-charged and sophisticated the look by strapping herself into the iconic “cone bra’’ that Jean Paul Gaultier designed for her Blond Ambition tour in the early ‘90s. Gaultier said he was inspired by his grandmother’s structured undergarments. We’re grateful his cutting genius didn’t find inspiration in chastity belts.

On the tour’s opening night in Japan, Madonna whipped off her black pinstriped blazer to debut the conical cupped contraption. “Do you believe in love?’’ she teased the audience. “Well, I’ve got something to say about it,’’ before launching into “Express Yourself.’’ As the tour progressed, Madonna incorporated ever-enlarging cones — practically traffic cones — into her stage wardrobe and red-carpet voguing.

Forced to choose a fad, I’ll take the pellucidly silhouetted nipple over the projectile bra any day of the week. But I’m more partial to a man’s strap undershirt anyway.

And that’s a wrap — preferably a Donna Karan wrap dress — on dispatches from the fashion front, from me.

Hey, it’s summertime froth. We’ll return to your regularly scheduled woe-is-the-world columns next week.