The Little Black Dress

Whether you’re a size 2 or a size 12, you can never go wrong with a Little Black Dress.

One of the first LBD's by Mademoiselle Coco Chanel

As I strut down the pavement, my heels clacking, I can't help but wonder, how the Little Black Dress came to be? Why does the dress sell like hotcakes, seven decades after Mademoiselle Gabrielle Bonheur “Coco" Chanel, first created in the 1920’s? What has enabled The Little Black Dress, my knight in shining amour, to remain in fashion for many decades?

So I drop everything, and trot back home to understand the Little Black Dress; the only dress in the history of fashion to appeal to different kinds of women, regardless of their age, shape, size, or what time they were born. It was the “go to” dress for a woman in the 20’s and still is in 2009. After all, the Little Black Dress that Audrey Hepburn wore in “Breakfast At Tiffany’s,” was auctioned off at Christie’s Auction House, for more than seventy thousand pounds.  You heard right, all for a dress.

The humorous thing is that although black was first considered the color of mourning, Mademoiselle Coco changed the face of black to being elegant, with just one dress. It’s cut, simplicity, and style, appeals to women all over the world. 

Mademoiselle Coco Chanel

Living in a world obsessed with being slim, I found out through science that black plays with eye since it does not reflect light, in any part of the optical spectrum, its reflection is less apparent. Seeing as our eyes, tells the shape of a thing by the help of its reflection, black’s reflection blends in with the background to the human eye, making the person’s appearance seem more like a two- dimensional object, which makes the person look more flat, and as a result much slimmer.

Betsey Johnson

It is the quintessential dress that overcomes every season, although continuously reinvented; it still maintains that essence of classiness. It is so simple but yet so chic.