To pedants, it may seem obvious when new centuries start. Yet it is striking that it is only in the second decade of centuries, at least 10 years after the official fin de siècle, that these 100-year periods seem to acquire the characteristics for which they are remembered, whether in politics or fashion.

In 1910, the funeral of Edward VII, Great Britain's king-emperor, attracted one of the biggest ever gatherings of royalty: as the coffin left London's Westminster Hall en route to Windsor, it was followed by a mounted cavalcade of eight European kings, the German emperor, the heirs to the Austrian and Ottoman empires, royal highnesses from Egypt, China and Japan, plus more junior princelings than you could shake a sceptre at. Behind, in carriages, came their queens and princesses in floor length skirts and huge hats pinned on upswept hair.

Yet these were not the figures that defined the 20th century. The funeral was the last hurrah of its predecessor, the 19th. Only when the outbreak of the Great War in 1914 engendered revolution, destroyed empires and unleashed the US as a world power did the 20th century really begin to take shape. It was then that women put off their whalebone, shingled their hair and allowed daytime hemlines to rise to the knee – where they have remained ever since (give or take an inch or six).