Ancient In 2600
BCE, princess
Nofret of the
Fourth Dynasty of Egypt was depicted wearing a
V-neck gown with a plunging neckline that exposed ample cleavage that was further emphasized by an elaborate necklace and prominently protruding nipples. In ancient
Minoan culture, women wore clothes that complemented slim waists and full breasts. One of the better-known features of ancient Minoan fashion is breast exposure; women wore tops that could be arranged to completely cover or expose their breasts, with bodices to accentuate their cleavage. In 1600 BCE,
snake goddess figurines with open dress-fronts revealing entire breasts, were sculpted in
Minos. Another set of Minoan figurines from 1500 BCE show women in bare-bosomed corsets. Ancient Greek women adorned their cleavage with a long pendant necklace called a
kathema. The ancient Greek goddess
Hera is described in the
Iliad to have worn something like an early version of a push-up bra festooned with "brooches of gold" and "a hundred tassels" to increase her cleavage to divert
Zeus from the
Trojan War. A silver coin that was found in South Arabia in the 3rd century BCE shows a buxom foreign ruler with much décolletage and an elaborate
coiffure. Rabbi
Aha b. Raba () and
Nathan the Babylonian () measured the appropriate size of the cleavage as "of one
hand-breadth between a woman's breasts".
Medieval (), when the décolletage was quite liberal. The Tang women inherited the traditional
ruqun gown and modified it by opening up the collar to expose their cleavage, which had previously been unimaginable. Rather than the conservative garments worn by earlier Chinese women, women of the Tang era deliberately emphasized their cleavage. The popular style of the era was long gowns of soft fabrics that were cut with a pronounced décolletage and very wide sleeves, or a décolleté knee-length gown that was worn over a skirt. Between the 11th and 16th centuries, the prevailing décolleté clothes of women of
Punjab,
Gujarat and
Rajasthan in India were replaced with covered bosoms and long veils as the region increasingly came under foreign control. During this period, elaborate, opulent courtly dresses with wide décolletage became popular in the Italian maritime states of
Venice,
Genoa and
Florence. Until the 12th century, the Christian West was not cleavage-friendly but a change in attitude occurred by the 14th century with France leading the way, when necklines were lowered, clothes were tightened, and breasts were once again flaunted. Décolleté gowns were introduced in the 15th century. In a breast-rating system that was invented at the time, the highest rating was given to breasts that were "small, white, round like apples, hard, firm, and wide apart". cleavage was termed the "smile of the bustline" by contemporaneous Belgian chronicler Jean Froissart. A contemporaneous French courtesy manual ''La Clef d'Amors'' advised, "If you have a beautiful chest and a beautiful neck do not cover them up but your dress should be low cut so that everyone can gaze and gape after them". Contemporaneous poet
Eustache Deschamps advised "a wide-open neckline and a tight dress with slits through which the breasts and the throat could be more visible". Across Europe, décolletage was often a feature of the dress of the
late Middle Ages; this continued through the
Victorian period. Gowns that exposed a woman's neck and the top of her chest were very common and uncontroversial in Europe from at least the 11th century until the mid-19th century. Ball gowns and evening gowns especially had low, square décolletage that was designed to display and emphasize cleavage. In many European societies between the Renaissance and the 19th century, wearing low-cut dresses that exposed one or both breasts was more acceptable than it is in the early 21st century; bared female legs, ankles and shoulders were considered to be more risqué than exposed breasts. In aristocratic and upper-class circles, the display of breasts was at times regarded as a
status symbol; a sign of beauty, wealth and social position. The bared breast invoked associations with nude sculptures of
classical Greece that influenced the art, sculpture and architecture of the period. In mid-16th-century Turkey, during the reign of
Suleiman the Magnificent, respectability regulations allowed "respectable" women to wear fashionable dresses with exposed cleavage; this privilege was denied to "prostitutes" so they could not draw attention to their livelihoods. The
entari, a popular women's garment of the
Ottoman Empire, resembled the corseted bodice of Europe without the corset; its narrow top and narrow, long, plunging décolletage exposed a generous cleavage. Around this time, cleavage-revealing
gambaz gowns became accepted among married women in the
Levant, where bosoms were regarded as a sign of maternity. In 16th-century India, during the
Mughal Empire, Hindu women started emulating the overdressed conquerors by covering their shoulders and breasts, though in contemporaneous paintings, women of Mughal palaces were often portrayed wearing Rajput-style cholis and breast jewelry.
Mughal paintings often portrayed women with extraordinarily daring décolletage. Contemporaneous
Rajput paintings often depict women wearing semi-transparent cholis that cover only the upper part of their breasts. In the 16th century, when Spanish
conquistadors colonized the
Inca Empire, traditional cleavage-revealing and colorful Inca dresses were replaced by high necks and covered bosoms. In European societies during the 16th century, women's fashions with exposed breasts were common across the class spectrum.
Anne of Brittany has been painted wearing a dress with a square neckline. Low, square décolleté styles were popular in 17th-century England;
Queen Mary II and
Henrietta Maria, wife of
Charles I of England, were depicted with widely bared breasts. Architect
Inigo Jones designed a
masque costume for
Henrietta Maria that widely revealed both of her breasts. Cleavage-enhancing corsets, which used
whalebone and other stiff materials to create a desired silhouette—a fashion that was also adopted by men for their coats—were introduced in the mid-16th century. , Queen of France, was an early 17th century fashion icon wearing dresses that showcased her cleavage. Throughout the 16th century, shoulder straps stayed on the shoulders but as the 17th century progressed, they moved down the shoulders and across the top of the arms, and by the mid-17th century, the oval neckline of the period became commonplace. By the end of the century, necklines at the front of women's garments started to drop even lower. During the extreme décolletage of the
Elizabethan era, necklines were often decorated with frills and strings of pearls, and were sometimes covered with tuckers and
partlets (called a in Italy and in France). Late Elizabethan corsets, with their rigid, suppressive fronts, manipulated a woman's figure into a flat, cylindrical
silhouette with a deep cleavage. Around 1610, flat collars started replacing neck trims, allowing provocative cleavage that was sometimes covered with a handkerchief. During the
Georgian era, pendants became popular as décolletage decoration.
Anne of Austria, along with female members of her court, was known for wearing very tight bodices and
corsets that forced breasts together to make deeper cleavage, very low necklines that exposed breasts almost in entirety above the areolae, and pendants lying on the cleavage to highlight it. During the
fashions of 1795–1820, many women wore dresses that bared necks, bosoms and shoulders. Cleavage was not without controversy. In 1713, British newspaper
The Guardian complained about women forgoing their
tuckers, and keeping their necks and tops of breasts uncovered. English poet and essayist
Joseph Addison complained about décolletage so extreme "the neck of a fine woman at present take in almost half the body". Publications advised women against "unmasking their beauties". 18th-century news correspondents wrote that "otherwise polite, genteel women looked like common prostitutes". During the French
Enlightenment, there was a debate about whether female breasts were merely a sensual enticement or a natural gift to be offered from mother to child. Not all women in France wore the open-neck style without modifications; a self-portrait by
Adélaïde Labille-Guiard (France, 1785) shows the painter in a fashionable décolleté dress while her pupils have their bosoms accessorized with gauzy handkerchiefs. In 1890, the first breast augmentation was performed using an injection of
liquid paraffin.
Late modern '' (1884) by
John Singer Sargent, whose cleavage caused enough controversy for Sargent to re-paint and make the cleavage less daring. By the end of the 18th century in
Continental Europe, cleavage-enhancing corsets grew more dramatic, pushing the breasts upward. The tight lacing of corsets worn in the 19th and early 20th centuries emphasized both cleavage and the size of the bust and hips. Evening gowns and ball gowns were especially designed to display and emphasize the décolletage. There was also a trend of wearing
camisole-like clothes and whale-bone corsets that gave the wearer a bust without a separation or any cleavage. Despite the contemporaneous popularity of décolletage dresses, complete exposure of breasts in portraits was limited to two groups of women; the scandalous (mistresses and prostitutes), and the pure (breastfeeding mothers and queens). During the
Victorian period of the mid-to-late 19th century, social attitudes required women to cover their bosoms in public. High collars were the norm for ordinary wear. Towards the end of this period, the full collar was in fashion, though some décolleté dresses were worn on formal occasions. Multiple pearl necklaces were worn to cover the décolletage. Along with the Bertha neckline, straps were removed from corsets and shawls were made essential. By 1904, necklines of evening attire were lowered, exposing the shoulders, sometimes without straps but the neckline still ended above the cleavage. Clergymen all over the world were shocked when dresses with modest round or V-shaped necklines became fashionable around 1913. In the
German Empire, Roman Catholic bishops joined to issue a pastoral letter attacking the new fashions. In the
Edwardian era, extreme uplift with no hint of cleavage was as common as a bow-fronted look that was also popular. In 1908, a single rubber pad or a "bust form" was worn inside the front of the bodice to make cleavage virtually undetectable. The
Flapper generation of 1920s flattened their chests to adopt the fashionable "boy-girl" look by either bandaging their breasts or by using bust flatteners. Corsets started to go out of fashion by 1917, when metal was needed to make tanks and munitions for World War I and due to the vogue for boyish figures. In New Zealand, the early appearance of décolleté clothes in 1914 was soon superseded by the "flat" fashion. Breast suppression prevailed in the Western world so much the U.S. physician Lillian Farrar attributed "virginal atrophic prolapsed breasts" to the fashion imperatives of the time. In 1920, paraffin was replaced for breast augmentation with fatty tissue taken from the abdomen and buttocks. During the next century, the brassière industry went through many ups and downs, often influenced by the demand for cleavage. With a return to more womanly figures in the 1930s, corsetry maintained a strong demand, even at the height of the
Great Depression. but fashions became more restrained in terms of décolletage while exposure of the leg became more accepted in Western societies during
World War I and remained so for nearly half a century. In the
Republic of China in the early 20th century,
qipao, a dress that shows the legs but no cleavage, became so popular many Chinese women consider it as their national dress. In the 1940s, a substantial amount of fabric in the center of brassières created a separation of breasts rather than a pushed-together cleavage. In 1947,
Frederick Mellinger of
Frederick's of Hollywood created the first padded brassière followed a year later by an early push-up version dubbed "The Rising Star". Under the
Motion Picture Production Code, which was in effect in the U.S. between 1934 and 1968, the depiction of excessive cleavage was not permitted. In the post-war period, cleavage became a defining emblem; according to writer Peter Lewis; "The bust, bosom or cleavage was in the Fifties the apotheosis of erogenous zones. The breasts were the apples of all eyes." Around this time, the American word "cleavage" started to be used to define the space between the breasts.
Early contemporary at a
Victoria's Secret fashion show. Lingerie manufacturers controlled and constructed the conventional bustline of the 1990s. In their heyday, Wonderbra sponsored a
National Cleavage Day in South Africa every year, and the
webcast of the Victoria's Secret fashion show became one of the Internet's biggest events. According to an urban American woman, during the 1950s, "At night... our shoulders were naked, our breasts half-bare". In the U.S., television shows tried to mask exposed cleavage with
tulle and even sketches, illustrations and short stories in ''
Reader's Digest and Saturday Evening Post'' depicted women with tiny waists, big buttocks and ample cleavage. In this decade, Hollywood and the fashion industry successfully promoted large, cloven bustlines and
falsies,),
Rita Hayworth, Jane Russell,
Brigitte Bardot,
Jayne Mansfield and
Sophia Loren, who were as celebrated for their cleavage as for their beauty. While these movie stars significantly influenced the appearance of women's busts in this decade, the stylish 1950s sweaters were a safer substitute for many women. In the 1960s, driven by
second-wave feminism,
liberal politics and the
free love movement, a
bra burning movement arose to protest against—among various patriarchal imperatives—constructed cleavage and disciplined breasts.
Yves Saint Laurent and U.S. designer
Rudi Gernreich experimented with a bra-less look on the
runway. ), panties were considered "lingerie," rather than so-called "foundation undergarments" and are not part of this data set. From the 1960s, changes in fashion leaned towards increased displays of cleavage in films and television; Jane Russell and
Elizabeth Taylor were the biggest stars who led the fashion. In everyday life, low-cut dress styles became common, even for casual wear. Lingerie and shapewear manufacturers like Warner Brothers,
Gossard,
Formfit and
Bali took the opportunity to market
plunge bras with a lower
gore that was suitable for low-cut styles. In the early 1970s, it became common to leave top buttons on shirts and blouses open to display
pectoral muscles and cleavage. Daring women and men of all ages wore tailored, buttoned-down shirts that were open from the breast-point to the navel in a "
groovy" style, with pendants, beads or medallions dangling on the chest, displaying a firm body achieved through exercise. As a new masculine style evolved, gay men adopted a traditionally masculine or working-class style with "half-unbuttoned shirt above the sweaty chest" and tight jeans. During the 1980s, deep, plunging cleavage became more common and less risqué as the popularity of
work-outs and masculine shoulder-padded blazers increased. It was followed in 1989 by
Jean Paul Gaultier, who dressed
Madonna in a pink corset. Soon, Westwood introduced an elastic-sided variant that worked as a balcony to push up the cleavage. The push-up bra and exaggerated cleavage became popular in the 1990s. In 1992, the bra and girdle industry in America posted sales of over US$1 billion. The hypersexualized styles of
Victoria's Secret became a "
zeitgeist" in the 1990s. In the early 1990s,
Sara Lee Corporation — then owner of the Wonderbra and
Playtex brands — along with UK lingerie manufacturer Gossard Limited, introduced a bra for Asian women who, according to Sara Lee, are "less buxom [and have] narrower shoulders". Traditional brands like
Maidenform produced similar styles.
Late contemporary Underwire bras, the most popular cleavage-boosting lingerie, accounted for 60% of the UK bra market in 2000 and 70% in 2005. About 70% of women who wear bras wear a steel underwire bra according to underwear manufacturer S&S Industries of New York in 2009. Corsets also experienced a resurgence in the 2010s; this trend was driven by photographs on social media. According to fashion historian Valerie Steele, "The corset did not so much disappear as become internalised through diet, exercise and plastic surgery". By the turn of the 21st century, some of the attention given to cleavage and breasts started to shift to buttocks, especially in the media, while corsetry returned to mainstream fashion. By the early 2000s, "sideboob" (also known as "side cleavage" In 2008,
Armand Limnander wrote in
The New York Times the "underboob" (also known as "bottom cleavage" and "reverse cleavage" It was further popularized by dancer-singer
Teyana Taylor in the music video for
Kanye West's 2016 song "
Fade". Supermodels, including
Bella Hadid,
Gigi Hadid, and
Kendall Jenner, contributed to the trend, which has appeared at beaches, on the
red carpet, and in social media posts. In the 2010s and early 2020s, cleavage-enhancing bras began to decline in popularity.
Bralettes and soft bras gained market share at the expense of underwire and padded bras, sometimes also serving as outerwear. Some bralettes have plunging designs, light padding or bottom support. In November 2016, the UK version of fashion magazine
Vogue said "Cleavage is over"; this statement was widely criticized. Soft bras and sideboobs became popular over prominent cleavages. Soft bras consisted 30% of online retailer
Net-a-Porter's bra sales by 2016. In 2017, the sales of cleavage-boosting bras fell by 45% while at
Marks & Spencer, sales of wire-free bras grew by 40%.
Jess Cartner-Morley, fashion editor of
The Guardian, reported in 2018 many women were dressing without bras, producing a less-dramatic cleavage, which she called "quiet cleavage". According to Sarah Shotton, creative director of
Agent Provocateur, "Now it's about the athletic body, health and wellbeing" rather than the
male gaze. According to lingerie designer Araks Yeramyan, "It was #MeToo that catapulted the bralette movement into what it is today". During the
COVID-19 lockdowns,
CNBC reported a drop of 12% in bra sales across 100 retailers while
YouTubers made tutorials on re-purposing bras as face masks; this trend was sometimes called a "lockdown liberation". ==Enhancement==