THE LITTLE BLACK DRESS

    The little black dress vividly defines itself in its name....it is an evening or cocktail dress, cut simply and often worn short. Fashion historians ascribe the origins of the little black dress to the 1920s designs of Coco Channel. Since that era the little black dress in it's ubiquity has simply been referred to as the "LBD" and it has since remained an industry in the world's women's fashion.




   In 1926, Gabrielle "Coco" Channel published a picture of a short simple black dress in Vogue magazine. It was a calf-lenght, straight and decorated only by a few diagonal lines. Vogue also stated way back then that the "LBD" would become "a sort of uniform for all women of taste."
  Since the 1920s era, the LBD was further popularused by hollywood's influence on fashion. As technicolor movies became more common, film makers relied on the little black dresses because other colours looked distorted on screen and botched the colouring process.
Also the rise of the Dior's "New Look" in the post-war era and the sexual conservation of the 1950's promoted the LBD and tagged it as a uniform and a symbol of a dangerous woman. Hollywood femmes fatales and fallen women characters were potrayed often in black halter-styled dresses in contrast to the more conservative dresses of housewives or more wholesome hollywood stars.
Some fashionistas and incidences who had further enhanced the popularity of the LBD are:-

• AUDREY HEPBURN as Holly Gollightly in Breakfast at Tiffany's epitomised the Channel idea of  wearing little black dresses, accessorized with pearls, as was frequently seen throughout the  early 1960's.
• BETTY BOOP, a cartoon character based in part of the 1920's. "IT GIRL" Clara Bow, was drawn  wearing an LBD in her early films, though with the advent of technicolor Betty's dress became  red.
• WALLIS WARFIELD SIMPSON, Duchess of Windsor, was known to own several little black dresses and  she said pretty much in praise of the garments. One quote of the Duchess: " when a little black  dress is right, there is nothing else to wear in its place".
• EDITH PIAF, the french folk icon performed in a black sheath dress throughout her career, for  this habbit she was nicknamed: "little black sparrow".
• In notorious "CONVENT GARDEN INCIDENT" a director at London's Convent Garden theatre fired the  then-obese-soprano-Deborah Voigt from an opera because she could not fit into a "little black  dress" then replacing her with a slimmer Anne Schwanewilms.

The LBD is one outfit one can never go wrong with. It can be dressed up or down depending on the occassion. For example, it could be worn with a jacket and high pumps for daytime and business wear or wit more ornate jewelry and accessories for the evenings.
It is a must-have for every fashionable lady's wardrobe.



By Mutay Endell