10/10: Cain- "The Little Black Dress"

Last night, I had a dream. I was sitting on a red velvet barstool in a dimly lit lounge furnished with a massive mahogany bar. I watched as the barkeep wiped the countertops clean. He was a man, probably around the age of sixty. His hands looked as though they smelled like Brycleem and salt; the type of bartender who memorized his regular’s orders and wore the same black bowtie to work every night. The room clouded with cigarette smoke; was playing light jazz. The bar was closing soon. There was a man sitting on the other side of the bar, a James Bond look alike. He was toying with his whiskey and coke while staring at me. I pretended as though he didn’t exist.

Quickly, his gaze started to burn my bare skin. I slowly shifted my eyes towards him. Meeting his study, I attempted to dissect his intentions. Focusing on my self, I recognized that I was not the least bit self-conscious. I stared back, hard. I placed my hand into my lap brushing the hem of my little black dress, “a uniform for all women of taste” I thought. Its elegance made me feel sexy and sophisticated. My dress told the world that “I can” and “I will”. My little black dress made me feel thin and polished, a blue-eyed Victoria Beckham- a new type of posh. My little black dress made me feel…timeless.

Prior to the 1920s black was often reserved for periods of mourning and considered indecent when worn outside such circumstances. “Present day black represents a variety of even opposing ideas: authority and humility, rebellion and conformity, and wealth and poverty. Black signifies absence, modernity, power, professionalism, mystery, evil, traditionalism, and sorrow” (Douma).

Black also implies submission. Priests wear black to signify submission.

What black is to you, most likely, isn’t the shade of charcoal under my father’s fingernails after a long day of work that it is to me. One point is unanimously agreed upon- black expresses emotion. Black pigments pull the stings of our hearts, handing us an invitation, asking us to feel something.

Nearly a century ago, Coco Chanel created a short, simple black dress for Edith Piaf to be worn as she sang about love and loss. The dress was only a calf-length, straight garment, decorated by only few diagonal lines, yet; established a consuming narrative between the black dress and the woman who wore it.

The Little Black Dress: American Vogue, 1926 

Black has been a color of fashion throughout history.

Rembrandt loved blacks.

Black is all colors, totally absorbed.

Black creates protective barriers, as it absorbs all the energy coming towards you, and it enshrouds the personality. Black communicates absolute clarity, with no fine nuances. It communicates sophistication and uncompromising excellence.

The little black dress is subject to evolution; new glamour will produce new variations of the dress. In centuries to come, check the fashion bible; there will always be a clause addressing and claiming the significance of the “little black dress.” Miuccia Prada expresses the reality of timeless yet contemporary fashion when she said, “To me, designing a little black dress is trying to express in a simple, banal object, a great complexity about women, aesthetics, and current times.

The little black dress is the only article of clothing that allows you to be whoever you want to be for the night. There is a mythic power behind the little black dress. It makes one thinner and more chic, more dash and classic; it liberates woman from the power of men. The little black dress makes you important. It’s just something that you know is right, even if it’s wrong.

Marilyn Monroe, 1956 

Works Cited

Douma, Michael, curator. Pigments through the Ages. 2008. Institute for Dynamic Educational Development. 10/10/15. http://www.webexhibits.org/pigments


Menkes, Suzy. "The Colorful History of the Little Black Dress." The New York Times. The New York Times, 06 Aug. 2013. Web. 10 Oct. 2015.