Issue 7, Winter/Spring 2009

Iconic Manifesto
By Emily Holmes                                                                                                

            The Little Black Dress is distinct from all other dresses.

The Little Black Dress distinguishes itself from the little lavender dress or the blue dress. The little orange dress does not appear in films, photographs, and magazines as quite such a trope as does the Little Black Dress. In fact, the little orange dress conjures nothing so universal or significant, one is left asking, ‘what little orange dress?’ Say ‘a Little Black Dress’ and one can more easily emerge with an idea unscathed by particularity, a conceptual break from ‘dress’ alone. The Little Black Dress is distinct from all other dresses.
           
            What is it about the Little Black Dress that distinguishes it so?

In accordance with Coco Chanel’s early 20th century creation, the LBD traditionally has a hemline at or above the knee and is preferably sleeveless. Associated words are ‘classic,’ ‘timeless,’ and ‘understated.’ Fabric textures and styles vary while the general category of LBD carries over strong through shifts in fashion trends. Since the black feminine silhouette in 1926 to Audrey Hepburn’s iconic sheath in Breakfast at Tiffany’s, this slinky dress has grown a second head.

            The LBD should be sexy, fitting the woman’s body just right. The dress should carry her gracefully though all occasions, from the gallery opening to the New Year’s Eve Party. In the LBD, she signifies her break-away from the full skirts of her youth, the denim jeans of her college years, and alludes to her aptitude for current fashion in her choice of individual black dress and accessories.
            The wearer is perhaps single, perhaps married, all the while not advertising her sexuality as blatantly as the scandalous, sexualized Red Dress. (Red dress, red light, red lips, and red flags go up. The passions of the body, already coded red, become wall-papered onto the still contested notions of female sexuality.) Still the LBD appears to be no prude, not a naïve and tragically tedious thing like the White Dress looming in the other room. (The White Dress follows all women as an expectation and prescription. The purity and virginity of White, while no longer necessarily an inescapable social norm for women, reigns in our color-coded minds: the wedding dress lives on. The Red Dress and the White Dress reveal stagnant conflicts of interests with women’s bodies: a whore or a virgin? The Little Black Dress struts somewhere between or beyond the two, holding a martini glass in one hand.)
            She is timeless, classy, sophisticated, independent, and modern. The LBD-wearer today rests assured that she remains both classic and contemporary. The legacy lives on, encouraged by the phrase, uttered by magazines and fashionistas across the board,

                                    Every woman must have one.

            The LBD is symbol and symptom of the modern woman.  

The Black Dress, painted by Alex Katz in 1960 is the image that first spoke to me about the LBD as an icon. In Katz’ painting, a white, elegant, dark-haired woman stands or sits in several different positions on the canvas. She wears the same iconic black dress, same hairstyle, and facial expression in each pose. She brushes elbows with herself, then crosses her arms and smirks. She sits waiting, in front of her self, black hair blending into black dress. Has time freeze-framed, fixing her face and figure into these five poses? Are these the same person at all?

When I first saw the painting, I thought of entering a crowded party and seeing white women who all look the same. (Against black fabric and hair, her skin is so white, her lips so red). The multiple figures wearing the same dress spoke to me of universality, of how one assimilates into prescribed roles. I imagine a sea of women dressed alike, looking alike, all in the obsequious black dress and heels. There is a quality of wearing a LBD that makes a woman universal, understated, and ‘normal’. (The LBD is quite different than dressing in a flamboyantly floral chiffon dress; different than sequined mini-skirt and stilettos.)

At the same time, the repeated woman in Black Dress here is recognizably of one person. Katz’ image gestures towards a fragmented female subject, one who is here, there, and everywhere; a self who very much transitions from sitting to standing, perhaps in waiting, retaining an appearance of coherency in her form. There could be hours or seconds between each pose, even days. From one figure to the next, her hand touches her previous pose’s knee, her elbow leads to another pale arm. These women remain connected despite temporal or spatial shifting.

I have read that this woman is in fact Katz’ wife, Ada. My limited research stops there, preferring to use this painting as a vehicle for my own observations on the little black dress and femininity. How this image fits into Katz’ oeuvre does not interest me as much as the idea of the black dress an image and ideology. The fragmented yet plural woman in the elegant uniform.  

What does it mean to say every woman must have one, of a particular dress? Every woman? Why? I find this language more than a recommendation, it is a mandate. A requirement for women. The ‘must’ makes me wonder. Must I do anything? What if I don’t comply? Why have I heard this phrase so many times? (The history of magazines and fashion designer’s quoted remarks in captions or short statements becomes an unaccredited yet prevalent discourse…)

The LBD is just a dress. That’s simple enough. But what is a dress? A dress is, of course, an article of clothing. The LBD is an article of clothing. It follows, that the Little Black Dress, as a dress, is an article of clothing which is a series of fabric fragments sewn together with the intent to be worn by a body.
Any    body?

Every woman must have a little black dress.

Women wear dresses. A dress, since we must refine as we go, is a series of fabric pieces sewn together in such a way than it could be worn by women. This definition yet falls short of a crucial, emphatic detail: the dress is an article of clothing made for women’s bodies. Women are the bodies that wear dresses.
(Is it still understated, timeless, and classic if a man wears it? The dress itself is not the problem. )
            We learn this from preschool on, a concept solidified and made more divisive in our adult years. Women wear dresses. Of course women are much more complicated than this simple epithet. What are women? Why do they wear dresses? If a dress is only some fabric bits and pieces, held together by mere threads and needle holes, why differentiate women from men’s attainment of it?
            What of masculine women’s bodies? Women who prefer to witness their bodies in buttoned shirts, belts, and trousers? How does the imperfect dress (too tight, too loose) on any woman’s body read? What of the frumpy and fashion-misguided black dress?
            Out of curiosity, is a LBD at a funeral still sexy and modern?

Women wear dresses. Every woman must have one. The LBD operates in our culture as asymbol of modern femininity, carried over from generations of women in skirts. It serves to define a particular kind of femininity (because there is no one single, all encompassing definition femininity, no matter how hard we try), one that has a cultural weight and approval in its favor that other femininities do not. The LBD becomes status quo, the representation of the resolute hemlines of culture with, for, and about the body. As an icon in a culture that prefers such a dominant norm, the LBD staples down a paper pattern femininity onto the fabric, pins and needles, until our bodies learn their proper shapes fit into matching sheaths.