When I was a teenager in Europe, I used to go to nudist beaches all the time. 30 years later, would the experience be the same?

In July 2017, I wrote an article about toplessness for Vogue Italy. Director, actress and political activist Lina Esco stepped out of show business to challenge public nudity laws in the United States with her 2014 film Free the nipple. Her film came to life and, with the support of Miley Cyrus, Cara Delevingne and Willow Smith, it became a political movement, especially on social media where the hashtag #FreeTheNipple spread like wildfire. That same year, actress Alyssa Milano tweeted “me too” and encouraged other survivors of sexual assault to do the same, building on the movement that activist Tarana Burke had created more than a decade earlier. The rest is history.

In this Vogue In this article, I chat with designer Alessandro Michele about our shared memories of our favorite beaches from our youth where we could shake our hips. Anywhere in Italy where there’s water—be it the party-filled Riviera Romagnola, the Amalfi Coast and Sorrento Peninsula, the soaring cliffs and coves of France’s Côte d’Azur, an extension of Italy, or the towering volcanic rocks of Sicily’s legendary Riviera dei Ciclopi—you’re sure to find bodies of all shapes and sizes, naturally topless.

In the 90s, when I was growing up in Italy, topless was everywhere and no one paid attention. “When you look at your childhood photos, you recognize these imperfect breasts and these bodies, each with its own story. I think about the ‘non-beauty’ of that time and I think it’s actually the ultimate beauty,” Michele told me.

In fact, I felt the same way. My relationship with the bare chest was part of a very democratic cultural status quo. If all the women on the beaches of the Mediterranean—from the sexy girls sunbathing on the shore to the grandmothers eating spaghetti al pomodoro from Tupperware containers under umbrellas—were wearing equally naked body parts, then in a way we were all on the same team. There was no hierarchy. In general, there was very little censorship of bare breasts. Free nipples appeared on the covers of magazines on newsstands, from tabloids to art and fashion magazines. Breasts were so naturally part of the national conversation and aesthetic that Ilona Staller (also known as Cicciolina) and Moana Pozzi, two porn stars, co-founded a political party called the Love Party. I remember very well my neighbor who hung their party banner on his window, on which we saw a bare-chested Cicciolina winking.