What do you call that ‘hair-muda triangle’ of man cleavage?

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Yesterday, Ray Smith, my colleague in the fashion trenches over at the Wall Street Journal mused on the recent stateside proliferation of bared necks and plunging necklines -- at the men’s runway shows specifically and in popular culture in general.

He touches on a topic I first wrestled with back in June 2008 when the trend first started to emerge on the runways of Milan and Paris: What exactly do you call that ‘hair-muda triangle’ of man cleavage? Smith invokes ‘heavage,’ which he traces to a tweet from Hilary Alexander, fashion director of Britain’s Daily Telegraph, describing the look sported by Stephen Gan of Harper’s Bazaar at a Paris fashion show in October.

That does manage to efficiently wrap ‘hair’ into the notion of ‘cleavage,’ for the general populace, but fails to include the vast majority of the male models -- who are usually clearcut from wishbone to waistband.

Back then, I was pretty proud of the term I’d come up with that managed to cover all the bases -- ‘dude decolletage’ -- but maybe there’s something even more clever out there in the ether.

Any suggestions? If so, let us know.

-- Adam Tschorn

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