What the ever-evolving LBD says about American culture

Coco Chanel making adjustments to a dress

The precursor of the “little black dress” was anything but little. Queen Victoria’s mourning dresses—which she donned every day for 40 years following the death of her husband, Prince Albert—were sumptuously designed with layers of thick, floor-trailing fabric. Although black was associated with mourning as early as the 14th century, during the Victorian period the practice became standardized. Grieving Victorian women would trade their frills for heavily trimmed black dresses, the more ostentatious, the better. (The pricier the mourning outfit, the more you missed your dead loved ones—or so the thinking went.)

With the start of World War I almost a century later, it became more difficult for women to uphold this lavish dress code. The Illustrated London News reported in June 1918 that “there is not a single person who is not suffering family and financial losses that make display and frivolous expense seem like folly.” Rather than abandoning black entirely, however, women referenced spreads in Vogue starting in 1916 and 1917 that detailed appropriate mourning-wear during times of shortage. Hemlines began to rise, and veils now framed the face instead of covering it.

And then, in 1926, black was suddenly liberated from its ties to death. Vogue featured a sketch of Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel’s black crêpe de chine sheath with the caption “The Chanel ‘Ford’ – the frock that all the world will wear.” Henry Ford’s Model Ts were black to expedite the assembly process, since black paint dried more quickly than other hues. In 1909, before Model Ts occupied garages across America, Ford allegedly quipped: “Any customer can have a car painted any color he wants, so long as it is black.” Together, the frock that all the world would wear and the car that all the world would drive helped to modernize the color black.

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