The way in which the feminine figure has been more widely represented focuses on the exaggeration of the feminine characteristics; example of this are the so-called ‘Venus’ Figurines, statuettes of women created in the upper Palaeolithic.

Whether representing a sensual meaning or an invocation of fertility, the general similarity in design and shape of these sculptures is extraordinary. All of them have a wide belly tapering to the head and legs, and their abdomen, hips, breasts, thighs, vulva are often deliberately exaggerated. Despite the ongoing debate regarding their cultural significance, they offer a possible understanding of the iconic role of females in the Stone Age communities.

Exhibition "Correspondences" by Yohji Yamamoto. Pitti Uomo 67, 2005. Photo by Alessandro Ciampi. Courtesy of Pitti Immagine. All rights reserved

In fashion and clothing, the image of the large and flourishing hips has been transferred in the forms and shapes of the full skirt. Numerous techniques have been used throughout fashion history to extend the circumference of this female garment, including the farthingale in the sixteenth century, hoops in the eighteenth century and, in the nineteenth century, the crinoline. This set the ‘hourglass silhouette’ as peculiar of femininity, whose shape is still considered the ideal shape of a woman’s body, recalled in fairytales and in the most traditional model of wedding dresses.

Ball gown for Lady Lamington consisting of a full crinoline skirt with puffed panniers designed by Madame Handley-Seymour. London, 1938. Courtesy of Victoria and Albert Museum. ©Elizabeth Handley-Seymour CC BY

Historical periods, life conditions and social status have influenced exaggeration in women garments too, as the lavish and luxurious confections made by the couturier Charles Frederick Worth during the regime of Napoleon III from 1852 to 1870. His international reputation for clothing the fashionable elite came to represent the opulence of the “Golden Age”, an era of material prosperity.

The attempt to reprise the crinoline and design the woman body with the silhouette of the dress in order to make it overlapping the ideal reemerged with Christian Dior’s New Look in 1947. One of his bestselling items was the Bar ensemble, a two-piece suit that exemplified the exaggeratedly female silhouette by means of a rigid infrastructure of wire, whalebone and cambric that imposed an independent sculptural form over the natural lines of the body.

Model Jac on catwalk wearing a dress for Viktor & Rolf . Autumn-Winter 2010, Womenswear Collection. Courtesy of Catwalkpictures. All rights reserved

Contemporary avant-garde designers continue to play with proportions and structures in their collections; Vivienne Westwood’s “Mini Crini” collections of 1985 and 1987 and the extreme silhouettes, opulent fabric and lavish trimmings of John Galliano are two example of contemporary use of crinoline. In the most recent use of structures in fashion an estrangement from the sensual meaning stands out in favor of a gathering between fashion, contemporary art and architecture, as in the work of Comme de Garcons’ designer Rei Kawakubo, who constructed structures in crinoline outside her garments or in that of Viktor&Rolf, whose collections on catwalk bear resemblance to performances of contemporary art.