It’s difficult to think of a piece of clothing more entwined with culture and fashion history than the little black dress (LBD). Whether worn by Princess Diana as an act of “revenge” and royal rule breaking in 1994, or Audrey Hepburn as she nibbled on a croissant in 1961’s Breakfast at Tiffany’s , the LBD is known for making an impact. As fashion historian Valerie Steele notes in her book, The Black Dress , the garment is present throughout art and literature.
In Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina , the doomed heroine was dressed in “a black, low-cut velvet gown”, while Edith Wharton’s Ellen Olenska, in The Age of Innocence , created a minor scandal by wearing a black gown to her coming-out ball. Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel is often, somewhat erroneously, credited with inventing the LBD – but she certainly popularised it in the 1920s. {"@context":"https://schema.
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com/sites/default/files/d8/images/canvas/2024/05/24/8ac74941-de45-4b18-bfbb-195ee856b80c_fe66afa4.jpg"} Diana, Princess of Wales, in her famous-infamous “revenge dress” from Christina Stambolian, pictured in London in 1994. Photo: Getty Images “Scheherazade is easy,” Chanel once said, rather sneeringly, of her pastel and poufy competition at the time.
“A little black dress is difficult.” In a.
