First topless dresses
In fact an early purpose of the corset was to show as much of the breast as possible. As early as 1388, Johann de Mussi, a Lombard author, wrote "Women show their breasts and it looks as if their breasts would wish to jump from their bosom". And he adds, reflectively, "Which gown would be beautiful if it did not show the breasts?"
The beautiful Agnes Sorel (1409-1450) was said to display her shoulders and breasts, including the nipples. The early Christian Church termed the laced openings to women's bodices "the gates of hell".
By the fifteenth century much of the breast was again being shown; and in James l's time young unmarried women displayed the whole of their breasts. John Hill, a sixteenth-century poet comments "That women theyr breastes dyd shew & lay out." But the early Anglo-Saxons were predated by centuries in the use of topless fashions. In various Mediterranean lands of antiquity the exposed breast was a commonplace.
