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Why the LBD rocks

Cindy on November 14th, 2009

I am against fashion that doesn’t last” – Coco Chanel

Anticipating the holidays, I’m running a favorite “fun” piece that originally appeared in The Christian Science Monitor (December 4, 1997) and is reprinted in Writing Home.

It’s been years since I’ve worried about what to wear to holiday parties. When the occasion calls for something more formal than jeans and a jacket, I reach for one of several black dresses I own. Black wool, black velvet, black silk, black velour … It’s good to have a closetful of options.

All women owe a great debt of gratitude to the little black dress, also known as the LBD. With or without pearls, it gets us through business meetings, cocktail parties, concerts, and funerals. It makes us look taller and more sophisticated. It forgives us for all the Halloween candy we ate last month.

Amy Holman Edelman’s The Little Black Dress (Simon & Schuster) celebrates the long life of this indelible fashion icon and explores its considerable impact on our culture.  Edelman credits Coco Chanel for popularizing the black cocktail dress in 1926. The famous French designer, she says, liberated women from fussy pastel tea dresses and other Victorian frou-frou. And thanks to improved methods of mass production, the LBD soon became available to almost every woman.

But Edelman reminds us that black has been making fashion statements throughout the centuries.

“Black is the color most often chosen to cloak the pious,” she notes. “It reflects the humility of a nun’s habit and the practical endurance of servants and livery.”  And for ages, respectable black has been worn during long periods of mourning.

It also has a flip side, a sinister nature. Black can evoke vampires’ capes, witches’ robes, suicidal moods, and a delicious penchant for scandal.

Shocking a conservative public in 1884, the most famous black dress in history was worn by Madame Virginie Gautreau in John Singer Sargent’s “Madame X” (above).  Gautreau, who posed for the portrait in a voluptuous black evening gown, was a married woman of “refined tastes and shadowy reputation” — and known throughout Paris for her adulterous affairs.   At the time, this bad woman in the little black dress almost ruined a painter’s career. Today, the contradictory nature of black — pious and sinful — only adds to its intrigue and enhances its appeal. No wonder it feels right for a big night out on the town.

There’s no denying that black can be bohemian, or downright rebellious, in its refusal to compete with pattern and color. Black is cool by itself.  It dominates the wardrobes of motor cycle gangs, creative types, and other expatriates. And we have Audrey Hepburn to thank for making black look equally at home at coffeehouses and cocktail parties. After its appearance in Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Hepburn’s black cocktail dress became an everlasting symbol of New York glamour.

Painter Georgia O’Keeffe, also known for her high-spirited individualism, wore a simple black dress at a time when other women thought the look was too harsh. As Edelman points out, O’Keeffe’s mentor and husband, the photographer Alfred Stieglitz, was first attracted to the painter “by the distinct nature of her dress.”

In the decades since its debut, the black dress has become a uniform that expresses a modern woman’s contradictions and celebrates her independence. It announces that she’s dressing for herself. And in a season overburdened by decisions — what to buy for Aunt Beth; what to wear to the office Christmas party — the LBD offers the ease of simplicity.  Or, as I keep telling my husband, you can’t own too many. – Cindy La Ferle

Tags: Amy Holman Edelman, Audrey Hepburn, fashion and beauty, Georgia O'Keeffe, holiday dressing, holiday style, LBD, little black dress, Madame X
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