No matter how full a woman’s wardrobe, there inevitably comes a point when she feels she has nothing to wear. Expensive, fashionable new purchases that just somehow don’t look right are cast aside in the frantic search. It is at times like these that a woman turns to her saviour: the Little Black Dress (LBD). The LBD is widely regarded as an essential part of any woman’s repertoire. It can be dressed up with chic accessories: Audrey Hepburn wore a pearl choker with her Givenchy LBD in Breakfast at Tiffany’s. Equally, it can be dressed down for day-to-day wear; perhaps teamed with ballet pumps and a cropped jacket.
Not that the LBD is Plan B when all else fails. Rather, as Wallis Simpson once declared, ‘When the little black dress is right, there is nothing else to wear in its place.’ And it’s popular with both men and women: a survey found that 96% of women owned an LBD, and 31% of men stated that it was the outfit they would most like to see their partner wearing. It is now even used as a metaphor: a new mobile phone may be described as ‘the little black dress of mobile phones’, implying that its design is timeless, elegant, and iconic.
The first LBD was designed by Gabrielle ‘Coco’ Chanel in 1926: a plain, short silk dress with simple diagonal pin-tucks. Prior to this, black had been reserved for mourning. In the new Jazz Era, however, Chanel’s simple LBD was embraced as liberating. Throughout the 20th century, starlets continued to favour the LBD both in movies and on the red carpet. Marilyn Monroe became an object of desire in a low-cut LBD in Some Like It Hot; Edie Sedgwick was the epitome of glamorous rebellion in an LBD in the 1960s; and Liz Hurley was catapulted to stardom almost purely as a result of the daring Versace safety-pin LBD she wore to a film premiere in 1994. The Season One Sex and the City DVD featured the four female stars, idolised by millions for their fashion savoir-faire, in LBDs, and thousands were either online or queuing at Topshop stores at 4am on May 1st 2007 in a bid to own the LBD in Kate Moss’ first collection for Topshop.
Current catwalk trends often have fashionistas and starlets adorning themselves like birds of paradise in garish colours and elaborate designs. Within a few years these all look dated. You can be confident, however, that when looking back at photos of yourself at university, the ones that won’t make you blush with embarrassment are those where you were wearing a Little Black Dress.
