The little red look

REVEALING the curves of breasts was considered lewd for most of Chinese imperial history. Bosoms were often bound (though not as savagely as feet, a bone-crushing practice intended to enhance the female form). Imperial underwear developed accordingly. Various types of compressing vests or tunics were popular over the centuries. High-class women often favoured the dudou, or belly-band—a diamond-shaped piece of embroidered cloth that stretched from neck to waist and was tied at the back (some designers are now trying to resurrect the dudou as a fashion item). Men wore thong-like loincloths, similar to sumo-wrestlers’ competition belts, but underpants for women were rare.

Bosoms briefly enjoyed a renaissance after the collapse of the last imperial dynasty in 1911. Fancy foreign bras also began to spread around that time. But such items were dismissed as bourgeois when the Communists took over in 1949. Under Mao’s rule, both sexes sported loose outfits. If women wore any underpinnings at all they were typically modelled on functional Soviet undergarments. During the anti-bourgeois fanaticism of the Cultural Revolution in the 1960s and 1970s a famous producer of female underwear, Gujin, started making woollen jumpers to survive.