Last modified on Mon 11 Jan 2021 08.54 EST
Can cleavage ever be a plot device? The 18th-century Russian court, as visualised in The Great, a bonkers new satire from Hulu and Channel 4, is a hotbed of moral iniquity, vodka and bears. But, like most costume dramas, it is also about breasts.
Take Lady Svenska, a courtier hellbent on ousting Catherine the Great. We know from her decolletage that she’s a baddie long before she calls Catherine “a bitch” for refusing a biscuit. Then there’s Georgina Dymov, the mistress of Catherine’s husband, Peter III, whose libidinal interests are crystallised by the gold-plated pendant pointing directly towards her bosom.
Last modified on Wed 16 Dec 2020 05.02 EST
It is Monday morning and time for her weekly video meeting, so Alice, a 35-year-old author and writer based in Paris, does what she always does before logging on: “I switch my pyjama top for a black turtleneck and slap on mascara to pretend I’ve been doing more than lying in bed watching Emily in Paris.”
Like most people whose jobs have moved almost exclusively online this year, Alice’s standards have not so much slipped as tumbled headlong into an abyss since France entered
le confinement in March.
“At the start, I paid attention to details – earrings, makeup – to recreate what I looked like in real, outdoor life,” she says. “Today, I’ve slipped into an in-between zone of neither bedwear nor officewear.” Her current getup calls to mind a “giant teletubby”, she says, listing her uniform of big jumpers, velour sportswear and the bare minimum of makeup. “I’m a tracksuit lady … but I am so sick of comfortwea