CHANEL: The Little Black Dress

Coco Chanel Little Black Dress - Etoile Luxury Vintage Amsterdam

It's classic, simple, yet elegant, all at once...

A little black dress suits every occasion and never goes out of style, we can all agree on that. But let’s go back in time when the little black dress entered the haute couture world.

The cover of Vogue


In 1926 the well-known Coco Chanel printed a simple black dress on the cover of Vogue. Vogue called the dress "Chanel's Ford" because, like the Ford Model T, a little black dress was a simple and affordable model, in this case for women from different classes. Although Chanel did not design the very first Little Black Dress, she may have been the biggest contributor to the dress's enormous popularity. Besides that, back in the days, you were in mourning, or you didn't have much money to spend when you wore black. But Coco Chanel changed that, she made black chic and elegant.

coco chanel little black dress

Photo: Pinterest

Black is the perfect color


Chanel's preference for black elegance can be found in her famous quote: “Nothing is more difficult to make than a little black dress.  The entrancing tricks of Scheherazade are much easier to copy.”  Poiret had this to say about the new Chanel creation: "What did Chanel invent? Luxury poverty... Now they're like malnourished little telegraph operators." Another motivation for using black as a fashion color was that you don't see any stains on black and the dress should fit every woman.

For decades, more famous designers have used the Little Black Dress to carve out their market: Dior in the 1950s, Givenchy in the 1960s, Vivienne Westwood in the 1970s, Azzedine Alaïa in the 1980s, Yohji Yamamoto in the 1980s, and more. Whether you're wearing an LBD today because you choose to fit and not make a fuss, or because black will always be the new black, the LBD remains effortlessly elegant.

Coco Chanel Little Black Dress

Photo: Pinterest


It’s a classic wardrobe staple that grew out of necessity, it just also happens to look fabulous. So, a little advice for you from us: never think a little black dress is boring. You can never go wrong with black.

 

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With Love,
Etoile

Sources
Revival Vintage
Pinterest
 

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