Celebrating the Little Black Dress
Have you got a little black dress in your wardrobe, that takes you anywhere, always looks flattering, and never seems to date? Then congratulations: you’re wearing a fashion icon. The Fashion and Textile Museum in London is holding an exhibition devoted to the LBD, which it calls ‘an icon of modern dressing’.
Apparently, before Coco Chanel invented the Little Black Dress in 1926, black dresses were only for funerals and domestic servants; the sleeveless silk shift she created rewrote all the rules, and hasn’t been out of fashion since.
There’ll be over 60 on show, from designers including Zandra Rhodes, Biba, John Galliano, Nicole Farhi and Ben de Lisi, and celebrities have lent their own favourites (rather them than me; if I lent mine out, I’d be sure to find myself with nothing else to wear one night and have to break in to get it back).
There’s a Jean Muir that Joanna Lumley says ‘transformed her life’, the sexy Julian McDonald number that Victoria Beckham wore on the cover of her fashion book, and a vintage LBD owned by supermodel Erin O’Connor, who says she never travels anywhere without one. ‘It’s like a blank canvas that can be dressed up or down, whatever the occasion,’ she said at the opening. ‘I think when you buy your first LBD, it’s a sure sign you’ve grown up.’
If you want to see how your own little fashion icon measures up to the ones in the exhibition, it’s on until August 25, at the Fashion and Textile Museum, 83 Bermondsey Street, London SE1 3XF.