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Coco and the Little Black Dress

Debuting in 1926 when women primarily wore black for mourning, Coco Chanel’s little black dress revolutionized chic. For over 80 years the dress has thrived as an essential component of any stylish woman’s wardrobe. It is more than alluring. It epitomizes Coco’s astute insight into the everyday woman, her simultaneous sensitivity to progressiveness and uncomplicated femininity. She didn’t merely create new fashion—she created a new look, a new way for women to see themselves. Her designs remain perennially en vogue: scarlet lipstick, the cardigan, women’s pants, the Chanel suit (a knee-length skirt and boxy jacket), the two-toned pump, layers of costume jewelry, bell-bottoms, designer perfume, sportswear. She introduced jersey, a fabric previously used solely for men’s undergarments, into everyday wear. She created outfits that could be worn from day to night. She liberated women forever from the corset, and helped them move more freely and more comfortably in their glamour. The little black dress has endured as her most timeless piece, turning women everywhere into the two things that Coco herself claimed they should be: “classy and fabulous.”

Coco Chanel’s own life epitomized the reinvention of women. Although she would lie throughout her life about her plebeian background, Gabrielle Bonheur “Coco” Chanel was illegitimately born in 1883 in Saumur, France. After her mother died of asphyxiation and her father, a traveling salesman, abandoned their six children, the 12-year-old Chanel was shipped off to a convent orphanage in Aubazine. There Gabrielle learned to sew and cultivated her distaste for excess and her appreciation for simple, functional clothing.

Gabrielle left the orphanage to sing at the entertainment hall La Rotunda in Moulins, France, where, upon receiving an encore to her song “Qui Qu’a Vu Coco”—“Coco, Coco!”— She took on the name Coco, the beginning of a lifelong effort to create of herself a legend. “May my legend prosper,” she said. “I wish it a long and happy life.” In Moulins, Etienne Balsan, aristocratic horse breeder, noticed her and courted her, eventually introducing Coco into good Parisian society and helping finance her initial efforts as a hat designer. At 26, Coco had an affair with Balsan’s friend Arthur “Boy” Capel, whose own wardrobe inspired Coco to introduce masculine pieces such as the blazer and sailor jacket, into women’s clothing. He took seriously what had previously been considered her hobby, and provided her with a salon for her clothing line at 31 rue de Cambon in Paris, which remains the House of Chanel today. As if she knew then the mark she would make on the world, Coco shielded her sun-struck shop with a stark white awning and had printed on it one bold, black word: CHANEL.

Though Coco always claimed that Boy had been her only love, she would be seen with many men over the years, including her clients’ husbands. While hating any relationship to fluster or distract her like other silly society women, her affairs were always a large part of her life (for better or for worse—her affair with German Nazi officer Hans von Dincklage diminished her popularity and forced her into a sort of exile in Switzerland until her professional comeback in 1954). Yet, in a male-dominated professional arena, Coco remained financially autonomous and unmarried, though she was essentially married to her career, still working in 1971 when she died alone at 88, her models standing front row at her funeral. When asked why she had refused to marry the Duke of Westminster, who met her at a party in Monte Carlo in 1925 and fell in love with her, Coco simply replied, “There have been many Dutchesses of Westminster. There is only one Chanel.” She enjoyed men—dedicated a part of her life to them, owed her initial success to some of them—but never allowed them to define her.

Coco entered the adult woman’s world at the turn of the century when women’s clothing literally restricted them. Their cumbersome hats, stiff collars, long skirts, tall shoes, gloves, and corsets prevented them from navigating through their day without a man to guide them. Even in these early years, Chanel threw out convention and created her own style—wearing an open collar, belts fastened neatly at her waist, her own hat designs. First and foremost a brilliant innovator and designer, Coco knew that to endure meant to be conspicuous. “People laughed at the way I dressed, but that was the secret of my success. I didn’t look like anyone.” Around 1911, Coco had begun wearing Etienne Balsan’s Shetland knit sweaters, eliminating her need for a corset. She soon brought the style to her salon. Rather than women being cinched, tightened, and confined, they moved unencumbered, their figure merely implied.

Chanel’s vision for women most radically triumphed with her little black dress. At an intermission of an opera gala, Chanel looked over the women dressed in flamboyant designs made popular by the renowned couturier Paul Poiret and, thinking they looked silly, said, “This can’t go on. I’m going to stick them all into little black dresses.” Before her own design, black had historically been worn by mourners, nuns, maids, or women of ill repute. Other designers had dabbled with the black-dress idea, but Chanel’s innovation and understanding of the modern woman created the legend. Chanel wanted functional chic—a dress that could hide stains and be worn anytime with ease and grace. She wanted to offer elegance and luxury to every woman.

In 1926, Vogue featured a sketch of the dress. “It had neither collar nor cuff, it was made of black crepe de chine, had long, very tight-fitting sleeves, and bloused above the hips, which were closely hugged by the skirt. It was a Chanel dress, a simple sheath” (Charles-Roux, 246). Vogue compared the dress to Ford’s Model -T, predicting that it would become a sort of go-to uniform, a standard wardrobe component for all women of taste. “Here is the Ford signed Chanel,” the caption read.

Vogue’s prophesy proved true: from Audrey Hepburn to Kate Moss to your coworker, the stylish woman adores her own little black dress. The carefully selected dress will never go out of style, will clothe her appropriately a thousand times over, will provide a canvas to work with. It hints at the woman while retaining enough mystery to create an unbearable allure. Chic simplicity and versatility are its hallmarks.

A little black dress: a maddeningly simple idea. Timeless Chanel at her best—the guidelines have never changed. Above all else, the dress should make the woman look and, equally as important, feel stunning. As Hannah Bradford, vice president of fabric and production at Jones Apparel Group, says, "You may not remember the shoes, the bag or even the man you're with. But you'll always remember the little black dress that made you feel perfectly poised, polished and sexy" (KITMEOUT). Technically the dress should hit at the knee, flatter from every angle, translate into any occasion, and allow effortless movement. (“Luxury must be comfortable, otherwise it is not luxury.”) With flats and a bright scarf, the dress becomes business attire. With stilettos and a vintage clutch, black means business on a night out. Wedges and shades or an oversized hat create the perfect garden party ensemble (read here: Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany’s.) Perennially stylish, the dress is neither too short nor too long, too tight nor too draping, too conservative nor too revealing. Yet it is meticulously personal. The woman can feely move about her life in a dress that, created to be worn by every woman, fits perfectly only her.

Persevering through almost a century of fashion, the little black dress is here to stay. Chanel was brazen enough to look at what real women did and needed in their lives. She threw out the bad -to think: less than one century ago women wore corsets- and created an immortal piece of beauty. Deservedly, she was the only fashion designer hailed as one of Time Magazine’s 100 Most Influential People of the 20th Century. Her legend resonates because her styles redefined women’s lives forever. The little black dress isn’t simply an essential component of a fashionable wardrobe. It’s a magical piece of history, the paragon of sexy simplicity. It’s a state of mind.