A history of the little black dress

01:53, 4 October 2012

LONDON. October 4. KAZINFORM "It's a woman's world," Vogue contributing editor Andre Leon Talley said as he prepared an installation of little black dresses for a new exhibit at the Savannah College of Art and Design.Men don't commonly wear little black dresses, which is why Talley asked some of his favorite female designers -- plus Marc Jacobs, himself known for slipping into a tiny black number -- to help define this iconic piece of clothing in the exhibit's accompanying catalog, Kazinform has learned from CNN.

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"I thought only a woman could define a little black dress," he said.

But as a SCAD trustee and now curator of a museum exhibit consisting entirely of black dresses, Talley is inarguably an expert on the matter, too. The 81 dresses in his collection represent the glamorous and the practical, the revealing and the forgiving. The exhibit opened September 28 and will remain on display through January 27.

Little black dresses, as designer Norma Kamali puts it in the exhibit's catalog, "take us to parties, job interviews, weddings and funerals. We experience all of life's big events in the little black dress. It can be respectful or empowering, depending upon the design."

For Talley, the dresses represent the evolution of design, the achievement of world-class artists, glamour, even bravery. But perhaps just as striking as the elegance of these dresses is the fondness and pride with which Talley views them. Many of his friends either wore or designed the pieces in his exhibit, and in some cases, as with Stella McCartney and L'Wren Scott, it's both. Talley believes that the woman wearing a little black dress can give it special meaning.

"Wearing clothes should be a personal narrative of emotion. I always respond to fashion in an emotional way," Talley said.

"I was sitting in Manolo Blahnik's store at Fashion's Night Out last year," he said, "and Sarah Jessica Parker was the first celebrity to breeze into the store."

What stood out to Talley even more than his friend's fluid leather Prabal Gurung skirt or the embellished bodice was the fact that Parker wore white pony-skin stilettos with the ensemble.

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"She had broken the rules that have been going on in fashion for decades," Talley recalled. "The late Estee Lauder says you can never wear white shoes after Labor Day. But of course, in today's world, that does not exist. And there was Sarah Jessica Parker with white shoes, with a black dress, after Labor Day. And I just said, you know, this is the example of how fashion goes forward."

Designer Scott's black strapless wool cocktail-length dress, with a kick pleat in the back of Chantilly lace, which she wore with black gloves, surprised Talley as well.

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