Never mind the French Riveira and fashion at Cannes, the action’s hotting up in India these days with the rising mercury making people want to wear lesser and lesser.

And one garment that’s taken advantage of this season and made a comeback of sorts, is the shorts. No more are shorts home wear and beach wear only, svelte women attend dos in hot pants showing off their long, sexy legs. And even Bollywood’s glam gals, lanky fashion models and roving VJs can be spotted in shorts these days.

When AT spotted actress Kangana Ranaut in one, she just cut us ‘short’ and said: “You don’t always want to move around wearing skirts, jeans and dresses. Sometimes it’s good to keep it short! It’s an advantage to be living in a metro otherwise in the small town that I come from, shorts look odd and you get weird looks.” Kangana has at least 15-20 pairs ranging from loose cotton shorts, floral ones to denim hot pants piled up in her wardrobe. And when she is jetsetting to a foreign destination, hot pants is one thing she doesn’t forget to pack. “You can wear them with chappals for a casual look or with suede boots to get that kick-ass appearance. Team it with a belt to make it look funky or wear it with a shirt to look dashing,” said Kangana.

Another babe who swears by her collection of shorts is Amrita Arora. But according to her, shorts never go out of fashion. “Now that it’s summer, you see more people wearing shorts. It’s the coolest option.” The best part, said the actress, is that “you just don’t have denim shorts now, there are even chequered, linen and satin shorts that you can sport.” Amrita picks them up whenever she is travelling abroad. “It’s the linen ones available here that I find cool, yet hot!”

You need not wear shorts just in the day time, it makes for a good evening wear too. “It can be dressy as well as casual,” said designer Rick Roy, who rates Malaika Arora Khan as the best looking woman in shorts. “She has the sexiest legs in the whole world,” he said. The designer is of the opinion that you shouldn’t wear them just because they are ‘in’. “You need to have the perfect legs to carry them or else they can look disastrous! If you have shorter legs, wear them with heels but if you have long, slender ones, then team them with flat boots or chappals,” he advised.

Celina Jaitley, Masumeh, Pia Trivedi, Shweta Salve, Tanushree Dutta, Aditi Gowitrikar wear shorts at parties and have given the casual apparel a whole new trendy look. The ideal way to wear them, suggested Rick, is to sport a white shirt with chequered shorts, a coloured belt and pumps. “The balloon shorts do nobody any good. It does nothing to the figure. If you want to look outrageous than there are designer boots like the shredded one or the ones with strips of fabric on them. And if you want to look funky then wear it with a ganji,” he said. Coloured beads look super cool on them too!

- times of india