Why did the women use to cover their bodies before 1920?

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

and is all the cleavage at the Renn Faire as historically inaccurate as most everything else there?

There was quite a bit of décolletage in many medieval and Renaissance styles, and outright bared breasts in some periods and places, but when present such fashions tended to involve square necklines.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

and is all the cleavage at the Renn Faire as historically inaccurate as most everything else there?

There was quite a bit of décolletage in many medieval and Renaissance styles, and outright bared breasts in some periods and places, but when present such fashions tended to involve square necklines.

For some reason everyone assumes that for the entire history of Western Civilization from roughly the Fall of the Roman Empire up until the 1920s or so, it was just as prude as it had been during Victorian Times, which of course was not the case.

To be clear, it wasn't necessarily indicative of 'sexual liberation' or whatever in these times and places that décolletage and toplessness showed up, because breasts weren't seen as sexual until I think some time in the eighteenth century. Definitely the Early Modern period. (According to a religious scholar called Sarah Jane Boss the process started when depictions of a bare-breasted nursing Mary fell out of style.)