When I think of the Little Black Dress, what springs to mind are the gorgeous displays of charismatic women. Fom Dianna’s ‘revenge dress’, Elizabeth Hurley’s Versace safety pin dress, Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany’s… the list goes on. What doesn’t come to mind are the inconceivable amounts of little black dresses being pumped out of production lines for fast fashion companies. Maybe it’s the perfect base to your Halloween costume or it’s just that time of year where you are growing your winter wardrobe. Sales of LBD’s are scary with brands like ASOS and boohoo selling thousands of different styles.
The first little black dress is undeniably sexy, first created in the 1920’s by none other than coco channel it was a modern masculine inspired dress. This LBD freed women from the previous tight fitted corseted constraints of dresses. It was functional, taking it’s traits from menswear; she was of course the first designer to normalise women in trousers. Although somewhat underwhelming to look at on the mannequin it became armour for the modern woman, an undeniably sexy concept liberating her from patriarchal control.
But the LBD looks different today, and perhaps there is a certain irony in its colour. Film director Osman Yousef created her short film Her Dreams are Bigger in reference to the gap between the wearers and makers of the clothes. Yousef Zada interviewed garment workers in Bangladesh and asked them to describe the Western wearers of their clothes, one woman responded, “she is not black like me.” The film carefully shows humanity at the heart of fast fashion. Yousef beautifully portrays the women that should come to mind, rather than Diana, when we think about the LBD.
The Little Black dress specifically is not the problem. But during Halloween, a major point of consumption, it highlights the problem with the fast fashion industry. Although it might not seem like such a big deal when buying your Halloween costume, it is important to remember the impact of what we might think of as small scale consumption. The resource consumption of affluent households worldwide is by far the strongest determinant of global impacts, easily dwarfing other socio-economic factors.
However, buying a little black dress doesn’t have to be part of the problem. The beauty of its simplicity is that it can be worn again and again. The LBD is fashion’s canvas, so much so in fact that designers have used the LBD to explore issues within the industry. In 2013 Victor and Rolf put on a 20th anniversary collection which reflected the fashion industry’s incessant pursuit of “the new.” The show titled The Zen Garden was composed of 20 all-black looks to explore this central theme.
The LBD is sculpture, a genre of fashion creation taking shocking roots in Catholicism but with future symbolism of rebellion, with a history of punk. The LBD is undeniably sexy and will continue to be as long as it is produced ethically.
Image provided by Tommy Manning