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If the Beatles wrote the soundtrack to the Sixties, the decade’s look was defined by Mary Quant, the fashion designer who died this week. She transformed women’s clothes with her PVC macs, soft jersey fabric and brightly coloured tights. And of course, the point of legs being clothed in all the colours of the rainbow was that they would be seen thanks to Quant’s greatest contribution to fashion – the miniskirts she made so popular.

Not everyone approved of course, but the debate over women’s clothing wasn’t new. Throughout history what women wear has been contested and so often it’s been about what men consider acceptable, whether it’s to enhance a woman’s sexuality – think low-cut dresses to show off what some call embonpoint – or to tone it down – all those skirts falling well below the knee and even right down to the ankles.

The focus on modesty owes much to the prohibitions imposed on women by religion, and the leaders of those religions – men. Women were required to dress modestly in order not to apparently inflame men’s desires. Sexuality was something to be shared with one’s husband and not with anyone else. In the Christian tradition, it was tied to one reading of the Fall, where Eve was considered to have tempted Adam, and it was reinforced by interpretations of other Bible texts too, that being clothed symbolised a recognition of Christ being clothed in righteousness. Paul, in particular, in his letters to Timothy and to the Corinthians urged that women should dress modestly. But women, he grudgingly acknowledged, could do good works.

Good works, though, take energy and effort – and Mary Quant knew, even if St Paul didn’t, that cumbersome clothes can get in the way. Her easy, comfortable outfits were not solely about being sexy. They were about functionality. She wanted women to wear skirts, trousers, or dresses that they could dance in, run in, and move in easily.

Even the Roman Catholic Church got this in the end. In the 1960s and 70s, many orders of nuns abandoned habits that looked as if they had been designed in the Middle Ages and wore something more modern. The hemlines might not have gone way above the knee, but they certainly made practicality their purpose.

In that same letter to the Corinthians where Paul urged women to be careful about their dress, he also twice told his readers that their bodies were temples of the Holy Spirit and that they should glorify God in those bodies. And what greater way can there be to glorify him than feeling fully alive, unrestricted by the imposition of someone else’s ideas of the right way to dress.

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