Radical Roots of the Little Black Dress

In Double X’s Closet Classics slideshow series, Erika Kawalek, author of the forthcoming Ragpicker, examines the 21st-century women’s wardrobe piece by piece. She begins with the little black dress.

There’s been a lot of discussion lately about what the recession means for fashion. One prediction is that women will practice “investment dressing [2].” The idea of spending a considerable sum on clothing that is cut from durable fabrics and then sewn into a trend-averse style may sound elitist and silly today, but before ready-to-wear became wear-and-toss, it was the principle on which most women built—and maintained—their wardrobes, the foundation of which was the black dress. A hard-wearing badge of middle-class respectability, revamped and retrimmed over and over again, for centuries the black dress was a woman’s one decent outfit, unfastened each night and hung on a peg.

The haute couturière Coco Chanel, whose life and work is being feted in two [3] biopics [4] this fall, is credited with inventing the little black dress (LBD). This is only partially true; there were many precursors. But Chanel was the first to take the self-effacing, austere black dress and make it undeniably chic. So we kick off this slideshow with Coco.

Click here to launch the Double X guide to the LBD [5].

Film still from Funny Face, courtesy of Paramount Pictures.