Is this the end of the G-string?

Ladies, rejoice. No more chafing, no more discomfort, no more discreet plucking at your backside like Rafael Nadal getting ready to serve.

The thong is dead. According to a new survey by Banana Moon, the visible G-string is the one fashion trend that Brits a least have sworn never to repeat with 99 per cent of its 1,035 respondents calling it a "regret". And the sales figures back that up, with UK retaielr M&S reporting last year that sales are hanging by a thread, accounting for fewer than one in 10 pairs of knickers sold (and they shift upwards of 60 million a year).

Head of lingerie design Soozie Jenkinson said that "the style is decreasing in popularity as women are falling in love with bigger shapes".

I remember my first thong vividly - who wouldn't recall the moment they realised, yes, that tiny triangle was supposed to be a gusset. I was on a post-A levels trip around Europe and had bought a flippy white skirt to wear. Where my teenage baggy jeans had covered all manner of cotton knickers, suddenly serious grown-up underwear was required.

It came in the form of a nude thong, purchased from lingerie shop Intimissimi long before it hit the British high street. I rhapsodised about that Italian thong. I thought it was the best thing since slice ciabatta (which, in hindsight, would have been comfier).

The G-string bikini was invented in 1974, in reaction to LA City Council banning nude sunbathing. Photo / Getty Images

If I'd known the Italian word for thong is "perizoma", which translates as "loincloth" and is used to describe what Jesus wore on the cross, I might have thought twice.

In any case, it wasn't long before my new undies started to rub me up the wrong way.

During my first year at university, I was rushed to hospital with appendicitis. Cue a painful wound, right on the line where my low slung jeans sat (it was the early Noughties, ok?). There was nothing for it but to wear comfy tracksuit bottoms, every day for three months - this was, after all, the era of Juicy Couture, Katie Price and Paris Hilton. And that meant a daily thong, too.

I bought an eight-pack from M&S for a tenner. Black with strings so slim I feared they'd disappear for good every time I put a pair on. Looking back, I can hardly believe I spent weeks walking around cut in half; surreptitiously shaking my backside, hoping the jiggling motion would somehow dislodge the half-centimetre of dental floss making my life a living hell.

I didn't, at least, succumb to the fashion of the time, for a jewel-encrusted thongs to be worn as a badge of honour, sticking up over the top of one's jeans like a 'whale tail'. Or to the painful-looking 'pearl thong' that had a line of white beads in place of a string and had any number of my pals rushing out to Ann Summers (and then to Boots).

The shape might have exploded in the early Noughties and Nineties - remember that Sloggi advert? - but the G-string first came to prominence in the Twenties, when showgirls and burlesque dancers started wearing them on stage to give the illusion of nudity.

New York dancer Margie Hart reputedly wore a black woollen version to make audiences think she was naked (she was once taken into custody after a particularly racy show). While American burlesque performer Gypsy Rose Lee famously wrote a detective novel in 1941 called The G-String Murders.

But it wasn't until the Seventies that the thong went mainstream. The G-string bikini was invented in 1974, in reaction to LA City Council banning nude sunbathing. Pop stars such as Cher and Madonna started wearing them on stage in the Eighties and the aerobics craze - think leotards and leggings - meant an aversion to the VPL.

By the early Noughties, thongs accounted for 31 per cent of the women's underwear market. And I bought into it, with every other young woman I knew. Laundry drying racks in student houses were like Christmas trees hung with teeny- tiny bits of fabric. Big pants, if you had any, were dried secretly in your bedroom.

Because thongs weren't merely in fashion, they represented our entry into womanhood (even better if your G-string matched your bra) and sexual desirability. Who'd want to sleep with you if you wore granny pants? After all, in 1999, we'd all listened as Sisqó sang about girls being scandalous and devilish as their shook their booty in a thong.

Thank Bridget Jones. Cheer for high-waisted "mum jeans" - but somewhere in the last decade, the bottom fell out of the thong market. Celebrities now regularly wear Fifties-style big knickers on the red carpet - even Madonna is a convert. Less is more, and that means a vintage silhouette rather than Katie Price climbing into a car with her backside hanging out.

Yet, worryingly, despite M&S sales falling, Selfridges reports that sales of thongs are up and account for 30 per cent of knicker sales - something they put down to the Nineties being back in fashion.

I'm all for the retro revival. But let's hope the thong stays right where it belongs - fallen between the cracks.