Schiaparelli, Gaultier, Armani Privé… fashion loves a nipple — and last week’s couture shows proved it.
For as long as the body has been clothed, the chest has been a talking point — and, predominantly, a taboo one. One show on the couture week schedule added fuel to the fire, not through its collection, but via its boob-baring guests. British actress Florence Pugh arrived at the Valentino Haute Couture show wearing a sheer fuschia gown from the house’s last season. She joined Anne Hathaway and Ariana DeBose in donning ‘Pink PP’ — the shade trademarked by (and named after) Valentino’s creative director Pierpaolo Piccioli.
Pugh looked feminine and powerful, but it was her nipples which set the internet alight for all the wrong reasons. Of course, there were people fangirling over her killer couture look and general insouciance, but it was a (hopefully) small but vocal group of misogynists which cut through. “It isn’t the first time and certainly won’t be the last time a woman will hear what’s wrong with her body by a crowd of strangers,” she wrote on Instagram in response to the onslaught of online trolling she received. “What’s worrying is just how vulgar some of you men can be.”
“What’s been interesting to watch and witness is just how easy it is for men to totally destroy a woman’s body, publicly, proudly, for everyone to see. You even do it with your job titles and work emails in your bio..?” she went on. “So many of you wanted to aggressively let me know how disappointed you were by my ‘tiny tits’, or how I should be embarrassed by being so ‘flat chested’.”
Pugh’s Instagram response signed off with #freethefuckingnipple. And while her anger is more than justified, the addition of the ‘fucking’ is actually neccessary, given that #FreeTheNipple is invisible on the platform and censored into non-existence.
Women’s nipples have been celebrated on the runway for decades. Off the back of the mini-skirt controversy — pioneered by Mary Quant in the 1960s — Yves Saint Laurent rattled society by showing sheer blouses which were modelled by London It girl of the swinging Sixties Penelope Tree, thereby freeing the nipple long before today’s campaign existed.
What happens on the runways in Paris usually trickles down into our everyday lives via the high street. Then there’s TikTok, where Gen Z find new ways to decode the runway trends. On that platform too, nipples are big for summer 2022. So forget the angry internet trolls and sad little men, join Florence Pugh and the rest of the fashion world in proudly freeing the nipple — it’s nothing new.
“Grow up. Respect people. Respect bodies. Respect all women. Respect humans. Life will get a whole lot easier, I promise,” read Pugh’s parting shot. “And all because of two cute little nipples…”
