“Really, they are so badly dressed … I will put them all in black to teach them good taste,”
So spake Coco Chanel, and a fashion icon was born. I’ve always loved that the little black dress has evolved so much and at the same time has remained so constant. I also love that, unlike the stilletto, or the corset, the little black dress is designed to feel good as well as looking good.
The LBD changes every year to reflect current fashions, body type – even weather. It can be perfectly appropriate at a picnic with friends or at race-day with the Queen. It can have many different meanings; it can be sexy, formal, casual, posh or fun.
Guy Trebay in the New York Times Style section says:
Shifts of taste and style are trivialities, of course, without any serious meaning. But they do perform one important function, as Proust pointed out: they notch our hours and moments and decades and leave us with visual mnemonics, clues by which to remember where and in which dress and what jeans (and wearing what cologne) one was at a particular time.
Consider how Madonna’s choice of LBD can be used to illustrate each incarnation of her long and successful career (if you have dial-up, you may just want to imagine the rest of this post):
(Click to see NSFW version)
It’s a fashion staple; you can’t go wrong wearing the little black dress. It’ll look great at any occasion. But there’s a catch. Not everyone can wear the same little black dress. We can’t all wear it the same way. I think we all agree that only three people in the whole world could wear this particular LBD:
Liz Hurley’s little black safety-pin dress was the perfect choice for that particular event, and it certainly didn’t harm her career at all.
But imagine if Hubert de Givenchy had chosen it for Audrey!
Jonathan Friedman defines creativity as: “the production of new structures out of a finite set of common elements constrained by a set of rules.” The little black dress is a fun and interesting way of allowing designers and fashion-wearers to find new ways of manipulating a cultural standard according to seasons, occasions and personal tastes. The wearer is part of an 80 year old tradition, the meaning of which nearly everyone knows. Yet part of that meaning is that the wearer must make it her own, convey a message. She can use it to fit in, to stand out, to rise above.
While it’s true that the “fashion world” tries to dictate what we wear, how we wear it, how our bodies should look this particular season, the changing nature of the little black dress shows how this relationship can work both ways. Yes, the rules can be restrictive, but for some this is a blessing – it is very hard to look bad in a Chanel dress. But as Mlle Chanel herself said:
Fashion is not simply a matter of clothes. Fashion is in the air, born upon the wind. One intuits it. It is in the sky and on the road.
Also:
The most courageous act is still to think for yourself. Aloud.
A few strict criteria (little/ black/ dress) that allow us to explore just how limitless the possibilities of design can be.
Here’s to the little black dress…
Oh yes the LBD concept is one of those core components of style – as opposed to fashion. The only place it looks better than on a woman of confidence and attitude is when it’s being removed from her. Without hands.
Thanks, Anna.
I love the fashion posts.
And as someone who every season has awaited black being the new black, I can but endorse your most timely celebration.
NB: Despite the recent announcement somewhere or other (I think from memory on the Fairfax online trashorama website) that for 2007 purple would be the new black. To which I say: get down to Myer and you can get $20 off a Politix shirt which is black with purple stripes and has double cuffs enabling you to either wear your black or purple cufflinks….
I’m on hols and just checking a week’s worth of LP and this is the only post I’m going to comment on!
Sorry to be picky, Anna, but isn’t the first Madonna dress sort of reddy/brownish and the last one chocolate?
But – on the most important question before the House, the little black dress is the new little black dress!
With all due respect to the LBD (and Audrey and Balenciaga and Givenchy) who wears frocks these days? Even on special occasions? Besides celebrities that is.
The biggest fashion advance in the 20th C for women was surely the official approval given to “slacks” (thanks to Dietrich and Garbo), which became jeans, which became pants, which became slacky dacks, etc.
Made a huge difference to women’s self-image – freedom to move in new ways, if not empowering, especially in the field and in the office.
What has not changed is the simple elegance of black for special occasions – still the most flattering on those widening hips.
Perhaps the LBD should now catch up with women’s history and become the LBO – the Little (slimming) Black (elegant) Outfit (allowing pants).
Just kidding. An icon is an icon.
I don’t think so Kim – it’s the colouring of the photo, but the better photos weren’t big enough.
The Madonna frock is choccie. The one on the woman with the pearl necklace doesn’t look very black either.
Fun post, although not something I as a fashion dud feel equipped to comment on.
I wear black because it goes with everything, but I don’t wear LBDs, not the least because I bet they cost the earth.
Sorry to deepen the descent into pedantry, but that doesn’t wash with me Anna. Both the pics in question contain actual black bits which come out just fine.
#1 – shoulder straps.
#4 – microphone, boots, belt.
Anyhoo, I love frocks, Grace. I know there are political implications, but the aesthetics trump them – no contest.
Plus I reckon a dress has better potential for flattery of *ahem* differently proportioned lasses than slacks.
I seem to have demonstrated the strength of my grasp on the politics of clothing nicely, right?
That dress is a funny colour, if you go from the video of ‘Like A Prayer’ which I have usefully located for youse all you can see it’s kinda browny blacky browny black.
Also, Madonna had very nice arms back then when she clearly had more than 6 percent bodyfat.
My bad on the first dress – I always remembered it as black, but there you go. The last one is black though, it’s just harder to get fabric to be properly black so lighting sometimes shows that up.
But agreed – she looked so much better before she got so fat-free.
I’m 186 centimetres tall and weigh 100 kg. WHere can I get a little black dress in my size?
Paul, I think ‘little’ is used more metaphorically than literally in this expression, as in the opposite of ‘big production number’. That said, my guess is you’d still have to make your own.
Grace, re ‘the LBO – the Little (slimming) Black (elegant) Outfit (allowing pants)’ — I think of this as the LVCBPJO or Little Viet Cong Black Pajamas Outfit, my default garb of choice for many years now.
Darlene, not only does black go with everything, but it’s slimming, it suits nearly everyone, and it doesn’t show the dirt. There’s nothing not to like.
Hardly anything I own is black – one black cardi, one black shirt with white polka dots. Even that has yellow buttons. Two pairs of mostly black shoes. That’s all.
Wearing black makes me feel miserable.
I don’t wear pants (or jeans) either. Skirts and dresses are easier to make and don’t use as much cloth.
I own a lot of black. Hangover from my teenage years when I was a tad chubby, everyone was ALWAYS telling me black was slimming. And not to wear stripes. And I had such a pretty face! And wasn’t I funny too? Fat girls always have such WONDERFUL personalities!
I swear I’m not bitter about that period of my life AT ALL.
Anyway, I love wearing nice frocks, even though I am blessed with ‘different propotions’ which can make finding suitable ones tricky (I have very broad shoulders). I have a couple of LDBs which I like very much.
I have the opposite problem, Kate – two different sizes in top and bottom, but the other way around.
But I also have two LBDs that I very much like. There’s one to suit everyone (even Paul
)
I am a large black dress wearer and have been since my teens when I was slightly less large.
Lily Langtry had one black dress and did quite well with it.
I’m also in favour of Chanel’s rules about wearing a ton of bling over the black dress.
Sorry Nabs but with me, you’d need hands and a front end loader.
Voila!
I’ve edited Christine’s comment so that everyone gets to see that image!
Don’t know about slimming, though…
Madonna and Liz Hurley et al are just LBD fellow travellers. They used the LBD’s mystique to make themselves interesting but Charlotte Rampling as pictured in Christine’s post is someone who could make jam erotic!
Now who was it on another thread who had those Vacola jars on offer?
Jam and broken glass, as I recall. That movie was one sick puppy.
Hmmm, PC, maybe it was the broken glass and not the jam that tickled my fancy. I did find the Kate Bush ‘Babooshka’ video rather stirring and there was some broken glass happening there too…
those dresses are lovely..well most of them. everyone should own at least 3 little black dresses
The LBD is definitely a winner. I have a LBD from Dotti circa 1992. I never quite had the legs for it, so I twinned it with some lovely black fish-nets that a prozzie acquaintance assured me would be cheaper than waxing.
Oh, and whoever it was who suggested that “slacks” were a good look on women is a bogan. The only time “slacks” look good on a woman is if she is statuesque a la Grace Jones. Otherwise they just look frumpy.
“Slacks” is about as contemporary a descripter as “boiler-suit”, moppet. I assume that you have some sort of old Presybterian women’s auxiliary fashion ronoed newsletter to inform these scintillating and razor sharp comments of yours…
CK’s image is Charlotte Rampling in “The Night Porter”, isn’t it?
It is indeed, Rob — that’s what the ‘jam and broken glass’ conversation was about.
Not very Presybterian.
I think I want a t-shirt that says:
Perhaps the HiveMind could get a team t-shirt thing happening, with an assortment of slogans for different occasions?
I think there needs to be a Lipsniger option in there somewhere, for a start.
Oh for sure!
How about a t-shirt: Teh feminist.