Long gone are the days when Agnes Sorel – favorite of kings Charles VII France – depicted with one chest open by the artist Jean Fouquetas well as those in which the philosopher and mathematician Emily du Chatelet – remembered as a hostess Voltaire – she wore low-cut dresses so as not to cover her nipples and Pauline Bonaparte playing with provocative banners, even going so far as to paint her nipples a dark blush to highlight them, female nudity still manages to represent an almost revolutionary act.
According to a former fashion editor Charm, Rachel Wang, the practice of not wearing a bra is considered “as old as feminism”. And history confirms this. The first feminist movements in which the liberation of the female body was at the center of the debate date back to the 1960s. One example is the 42nd Miss America Pageant. During the awards ceremony, a group of 200 women occupied the sidewalks of Boardwalk Hall in Atlantic City, tossing bras, false eyelashes and other women’s items into a “freedom bin”. For the first time, the term “bra burners” appeared in newspapers (burn bras, ed.), similar to the Vietnam War protesters who had their draft cards burned.
While the “bra burner” myth is just a myth, the abandonment of the bra restriction historically represents a turning point for the female figure. An important position that in 2013 turned into the “Free the Nipple” movement, born out of Instagram and Facebook’s ban on topless images, and transformed over time into a requirement for women to freely show their bodies.
Fashion today has become the bearer of this message, on the wave of a new femininity that does not have to be flaunted, but not even whispered. In the nineties it would have been called a “cable TV nipple” – a term born to describe the appearance Jennifer Aniston V Friends – or that nudity was hinted at so as not to get past prime-time censorship. So, what caused a scandal at Palazzo Pitti in 1967 (Missoni models went to the catwalk without a bra) is today one of the most copied and appreciated trends.
Rick Owens, Coperni, Ferragamo, Prada, Valentino and even Chanel have decided this spring/summer 2023 to celebrate the freedom of women with more or less visible transparency, fabrics that are close to the body, showing all shapes or even redesigning them. , as in the case of Jean Paul Gaultier, and cuts that strategically cover and expose the body at every turn.