These are the perfect LBDs to wear when this is all over – VOGUE India

The Little Black Dress is so synonymous with sexuality, hedonism and fashion that its practically enshrined in runway lore, but it was Coco Chanel who was the first designer to point to its power in an entrepreneurial flex that would become the key to her success.

Chanel illustration in American Vogue, October 1926.

In 1926, she introduced the LBD to the world via an illustration in the October issue of American Voguehe artwork depicting a long-sleeved, knee-grazing black dress. Through a 2021 lens, the silhouette is demure, conservative even. But at the time of its release, the dress embodied the liberal spirit of the Roaring Twenties; when young women everywhere wanted to let society know that change was afoot.

In the decades since, the cliche of the LBDs timelessness has perennially overshadowed its political timeliness. The same month (December 1961) that Breakfast at Tiffanys was released and the world witnessed Audrey Hepburn playing an escort in an LBD (long black dress in this case) by Hubert de Givenchy, the contraceptive pill also made its UK debut (caveat: for married women only).

Audrey Hepburn in a dress designed by Hubert de Givenchy, 1961.

By the early 1980s, when the cabbage-soup diet was pinging between fax machines and a new global aerobics obsession (Jane Fondas Workout) blew up out of Beverly Hills, the LBD had gone from being a silver bullet for protracted wardrobe decisions to the post-diet dress. Rather than the marker of liberty Chanel had endorsed, this one article of clothing was all-too-often becoming a societal scale against which women's bodies and morals were graded.

When Princess Diana stepped out to attend a dinner at the Serpentine Gallery in June 1994 on the same evening that the TV interview in which Prince Charles admitted his extramarital affair was broadcast, her Christina Stambolian look was branded the revenge dress. It wasnt the independence dress or the freedom dress, it was the revenge dress? Come on.

Princess Diana arriving at the Serpentine Gallery in a gown by Christina Stambolian, June 1994.

So, where does this leave us in an era when we dont want to be minimised to our relationship status or slimmed-down? When we are powering a new global movement to Reclaim These Streets and finally getting our long-argued point across that what we choose to wear is immaterial to our human right to feel safe in our streets, clubs and homes?

Coperni autumn/winter 2021

Almost a century on from Coco Chanels brainwave, in the hands of todays designers (Lanvins Bruno Sialelli, Fashion Easts Nensi Dojaka, Sandy Liang and Coperni are leading the way) the LBD is once again symbolic of societal change. Dojaka is adamant that the dress measures up to the woman, rather than the other way around. The straps are all adjustable, and thats really important, so they fit girls technically, she told Vogues Sarah Mower in the days leading up to her AW21 collection reveal. Because womens bodies are so different, and the dresses wouldnt work otherwise. Meanwhile, at Copernis Paris drive-in runway show, the headlights of 36 electric cars lit up a catwalk opened by supermodel Adut Akech quite literally owning the citys streets in this seasons cleanest take on the LBD.

One things for certain: the roar of the Twenties 2.0 is ready to rip.

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These are the perfect LBDs to wear when this is all over - VOGUE India