You've got company Paris Hilton - even classy stars are now ditching their undies

WHEN Anne Hathaway stepped out of a limo for the “Les Misérables” premiere in December, the paparazzi bulbs weren’t the only things flashing.

Paltrow

WHEN Anne Hathaway stepped out of a limo for the “Les Misérables” premiere in December, the paparazzi bulbs weren’t the only things flashing.

Wearing a slick, black Tom Ford gown, the girl next door revealed to the world that she wasn’t wearing any underwear.

The crotch shot flew around the world faster than Richard Branson in a high-speed jet. Hathaway said she was “devastated.”

But unlike the early pioneers of making their privates public — like Paris Hilton, Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera (who showcased her family jewels while pregnant) — the wholesome Hathaway gave the act more gravitas.

“Anne is someone we all regard as a classy young lady,” says Breanne L. Heldman, New York bureau chief of Yahoo! entertainment. “She is the one who would make people think, ‘It’s OK if I am not wearing underwear with this dress.’ ”

The Oscar winner isn’t the only starlet who has turned the bare booty from déclassé to de riguer in recent years.

In June, Reese Witherspoon was the victim of a swift wind that lifted the skirt on America’s sweetheart to reveal a bare bottom.

“Girls” star Lena Dunham admitted she wasn’t wearing panties under a black Dior pantsuit in January. And just last week, swimsuit model Chrissy Teigen told Joan Rivers on “Fashion Police” that she never wears skivvies because she “doesn’t like it.”

“There were some [women] in the beginning that were sloppy and of the ‘Girls Gone Wild’ era, which is no longer,” says Us Weekly fashion director Sasha Charnin Morrison of the Hilton and Spears peep shows.

Nowadays, Morrison says, the no-pants trend has more to do with red-carpet style than shock value. Stars simply don’t want the panty line to distract from the silhouette of the clothing.

“This isn’t ‘CSI Seventh Avenue.’ There is no criminal activity. I think they want to represent the designer they’re wearing in their purest form,” says Morrison, who points out the rise of the sheer side-panel dresses sported by Jenna Dewan, Kate Winslet and Gwyneth Paltrow.

But the phenomenon isn’t new, says Morrison. In the ’70s, nobody wore underwear under their Halston gowns at Studio 54 — but it was hardly worth mentioning.

“Back then, we only had [photographer] Ron Galella. We were much more respectful about those things,” she says. “But now with Instagram and iPhone photographs becoming the covers of magazines, these images are everywhere.”

This story originally appeared on the New York Post.