If Billy Porter's theatrical looks recall the spirit kanken bag of Björk's egg-laying Oscar appearance, it's no coincidence  his stylist, Sam Ratelle, cites the swan dress as a huge influence. "It's one of the first fashion moments that I ever experienced that left a mark in me," he tells BBC Culture. "I grew up in a religious cult called Branhamism, and I wasn't allowed to watch television or have any sort of media. No internet, no cell phone, no tabloids or magazines. But I did go to public school, and I just remember everybody at school freaking out about the dress."

For this weekend's Oscars, which will have a real-life, socially-distanced red carpet, organisers have made it clear that sweatpants are not an option, telling attendees: school bags for girls "We're aiming for a fusion of Inspirational and Aspirational, which in actual words means formal is totally cool if you want to go there, but casual is really not."So will celebrities indulge us and show us something a little more creative? side bag "I think we all just really need a break from monotony, so it would be good to have something that's a little bit more fun and playful," says Stevenson.

Corsets are in focus from the first episode of the series. In one comical scene, Prudence, the eldest daughter of social-climbing Lady Featherington, is being "tight-laced" into a corset by a maid to be slimmer for her presentation to Queen Charlotte. The laces are yanked until she can barely breathe, as her unsympathetic mother waterproof bag looks on, saying that when she was Prudence's age, her waist had been "the size of an orange and a half".

While researching her book The Corset: A Cultural History, Valerie Steele worked with a doctor "to try to figure out to what extent the corset could have caused disease. But [we concluded] it didn't cause curvature of the spine, in fact it has often helped to correct it. Perhaps a few women fainted, or felt the fabric chafed their skin, but the corset didn't cause your liver to be split in two or the many things it's been blamed for".

Among the most memorable corset "moments" of the past 100 years are Horst P Horst's famous photograph Mainbocher Corset, Paris in 1939; Sophia Loren's black satin hourglass number in The Millionaire, 1960 and the more recent Wonder Woman 1984, with its moulded metal corset-armour. All have attracted criticism fossil bags as well as appreciation. Decades after the release of Gone with the Wind, US feminist writer Gloria Steinem described Scarlett O'Hara being laced into a corset to achieve a 17-in waist in order to seduce Ashley as a "perfect illustration of female bondage, Southern style".Steele has heard the disempowering argument many times but says "It's a mistake to patronise women, to suggest they were all stupid victims for, say 400 years," she says. Laskowska agrees: "A corset can be a beautiful thing you wear just for yourself, not for any  man. I do that, and I feel empowered by it."