The timeless glamour of a wardrobe essential

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Rosalind Ormiston looks at the history of an enduring fashion icon

At Tullie House Museum and Gallery, Carlisle (until 26 February 2012), in a stunning exhibition titled ‘Little Black Dress’, visiting curator Pollyanna Clayton-Stamm explores the psychology of the ever-desirable ‘LBD’ or Little Black Dress, a staple item of clothing in many women’s wardrobes. In a review of its use, dating from the 1850s as a mourning dress to 21st-century fashion inspired by Plato, many ‘best dresses’ are on display, including mourning dresses, wedding dresses and high fashion.

In the informative and beautifully displayed show one learns why the ‘Little Black Dress’ has gained a celebrity status. In 1926, the French couturier Coco Chanel launched her ‘Ford’ dress, so named because its sales equalled the high sales of Ford motor cars. Her design was the definitive Little Black Dress: stunning, chic and practical. Since that time an LBD has been an essential in (nearly) every woman’s wardrobe. To chart its history Clayton-Stamm (with contributions from David Sinclair), combines LBD examples with vintage photographs, drawings, film footage and dress patterns (highlighting the home dressmaker’s ability to own a copy of the latest fashion). Primarily using Tullie House’s vast costume collection to show the evolution of the little black dress both preceding the launch of Chanel’s ‘Ford’ design and in the following 80 years, Clayton-Stamm explores how it has been adapted to suit changing fashion styles and the cultural climate.

At the entrance to the show, the major exhibit is a Victorian evening-wear mourning dress, c.1898. It destroys the notion that black is a drab, funereal shade. This is a showstopper dress with accessories that heighten its sense of occasion. The tradition of mourning in Europe was boosted by Queen Victoria’s perpetual wearing of black clothing after the premature death of her husband Prince Albert in 1861. In the USA, we are informed that ‘entire sections of department stores were devoted to the “clothing of grief”’. Many examples of the LBD as a dress of mourning are explored through the eras, including memorable moments in history such as Jackie Kennedy’s LBD and jacket worn in November 1963 for the state funeral of her assassinated husband, President John F. Kennedy.

Walking through the rooms of this exhibition it is easy to see why the LBD is a perennial item of dress. Here in film, photographs and cartoons are the women who made the black dress highly fashionable. In a chronological display, which focuses on the decades after Chanel’s launch of the Ford dress, the change in fashion style is mirrored in the dress displays and memorabilia, supported by newsreels, recorded interviews, couturiers’ fashion shows and vintage film clips, to give historical context to the LBD. The influence of Hollywood is shown, particularly in MGM’s collaboration with Chanel to ensure that contemporary clothing in motion picture films did not date too quickly. We see how much onscreen outfits, including variations on the LBD, affected high-street fashion and dressmaker patterns across continents. We are also shown the contribution of Elsa Schiaparelli, a favourite couturier of Hollywood film actresses including Mae West, for whom she designed a costume for the 1937 film, ‘Everyday’s a Holiday’. It includes Betty Boop, the first cartoon character to wear the LBD, in her debut performance in 1930 shown here in film extracts. 

The exhibition continues with the glamour of the 1940s to 1960s, featuring style icons such as Greta Garbo, Grace Kelly and Audrey Hepburn. After the Second World War interest in haute couture grew. The 1947 ‘New Look’ soft silhouette created by French couturier Christian Dior used large quantities of dress fabric, which British and US governments frowned upon as fabric was still being rationed. The defining silhouette of the 1960s was the mini-dress, inspired by the French designer André Courrèges, with Mary Quant and the ‘Chelsea Look’ in London. This was followed by Britain’s hippy chic, disco and punk LBDs of the 1970s – called the ‘Me’ decade by Tom Wolfe – and 1980s ‘power dressing’. The display for the 1990s succinctly captures the growing culture of ‘celebrity’. That notable royal, the late Diana, Princess of Wales, features in a photograph showing her flirtatious off-shoulder LBD, worn for a function at the Serpentine Gallery in London in June 1994 on the evening HRH The Prince of Wales acknowledged his infidelity in a television documentary broadcast.

The final room of the exhibition, with dresses by Vivienne Westwood, Yves St Laurent and Issey Miyake, explores the LBD as a work of art. These dresses fight for attention alongside the work of younger designers, mostly recent graduates. Here 21st-century variations of the little black dress, created by Katie Newsam, Harriet Holling, Gavin Pierre Medford, Lianna Shephard, Diane Bates and Sanne, a Dutch designer with a Calvinist LBD interpretation, are on display. Perhaps the most unusual LBD of the exhibition is by Amila Hrustic (b.1987), a graduate of the Academy of Fine Arts in Sarajevo (Bosnia and Herzegovenia) and the RCA. Her LBD collection in textiles and paper is inspired by the ancient Greek philosopher Plato and titled ‘Platonic Studies’. Using geometric forms to examine space and the human body, Hrustic explores the qualities of the LBD, its ‘simplicity of form and the use of black and white print pattern on rigid paper emphasise the sculptural quality of the collection’, proving that the LBD, in whichever direction the designer chooses to take it, continues to intrigue.