Moralists have raged through history against fashions which are too short, too long, too tight, too loose or too costly. This book looks at fashion extremes over the centuries, from the sexual display of the codpiece through to corsets, crinolines and decolletage. In 747 St Boniface deemed wide stripes and scarlet borders to incite lust and ruination of the soul. Well over a millennium later immodest dress ranked high in Jesuit Father Bernard Vaughan's book on the sins of society. Medical practitioners once labelled the v-necked top, now a standard style, 'the pneumonia neckline'. Was it the force of society or sheer vanity of fashion that drove women to wear sleeves the size of balloons? Are sexual boundaries between dress worn by men and women diminishing? What morals still bind us to our Judeo-Christian heritage and lead us to express ourselves through appearances?

Aileen Ribeiro Professor in the History of Art, University of London, and Lecturer in the History of Dress Department, Courtauld Institute of Art.