Hollywood actress Barbara Stanwyck shows off the Thirties trend for backless gowns

The nude female body has always delighted and shocked cultures in equal measure. The story of Adam and Eve teaches us to be ashamed of our nudity, hence why the female body was clothed from head to toe for centuries. Until the 19th century, the idea of revealing lots of flesh was a huge taboo – something only prostitutes would consider. Only skin on the upper body could be shown off, with off-the-shoulder dresses that revealed a hint of the clavicle becoming popular from the 1650s, while gowns that displayed the breasts were ushered out of fashion from the 1760s.

And as attitudes to dressing became more liberal, erogenous zones began to move around. The Victorian era made the ankle a highly sexualised body part with decorated petticoats giving coquettish glimpses of a lady’s undergarments, while the Thirties saw the exposed back become the height of fashion (rising conservatism in Hollywood meant that dresses could no longer be cut away at the front, so costume designers simply cut away at the back and sides instead). In the Sixties and Seventies, it was thighs that were deemed highly sexual; a part of the body that had been hidden away until the mini-skirt arrived.

Interestingly, for many years, a woman’s style was also defined by whether she was a wife, a widow or single – this sartorial code even overruled her social standing. That’s why, during Elizabethan times, even the queen had to comply with the tradition for women to wear dresses that exposed the top of their breasts as a means of showing their availability for marriage. Similarly, women at the French court in the 17th century painted on beauty spots in different places depending on their marital status – on the right cheek showed that a woman was married, the left that she was engaged, and by the mouth that she was available for courting.

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One idea that still pervades, even today, is the association between femininity and looking delicate – reinforcing women’s position as the submissive sex. Cullen explains: “The Victorian ideal of the woman as the frailer sex, dressed up in doll-like finery, associated the idea of femininity with soft, docile, domestic creatures.” It’s significant that the flapper look – short hair, dropped waists and short skirts – which caused such a furore in the Twenties, was driven by women shrugging off the confines of domesticity and standing up for the new freedoms they had acquired during the war – paid employment, freedom to socialise and have sex. They were the antithesis of pre-war femininity. Androgyny was liberation. That same spirit can be seen more literally in the power-dressing Eighties, when women embraced mannish trousers and shoulder pads to show they could hold their own in the office.

Shapeshifters: our changing silhouette