When historians and arbiters of style settle down to plot dresses that changed the face of fashion over the past 100 years, the same touchstones of good taste and gravitas are referred to time and time again: Dior’s New Look, Chanel’s Little Black Dress and Mary Quant’s mini among them. While those looks naturally feature in this gallery, there are also some nominations that may at first glance appear less enduring – a cute shift dress, a high street doppelganger or a bin-bag ballgown? However fashion is not only made of dresses that act as signifiers of momentous change in social, cultural or political revolution; it is also about dresses that are fleeting in their fashionability and the fads that sweep Planet Fashion like a pandemic claiming victims along the way. Often a fashion moment it is more about the person wearing the dress than the dress itself but that’s nothing new for designers (in fashion what is?), who have from the start of time queued up to dress queens, actresses and celebrated courtesans. Here are 50 frocks that have helped fashion the past 100 years.