Image credit: SH Skyline at Night, by Ryan Ouyang
Ishita Jaiswal
Read the Faculty Introduction.
In the early hours of the morning, a cab enters a completely empty New York City street and stops in front of a grayish-brown building containing a Tiffany’s store. From the cab descends a beautiful woman. She pays the driver, and stands facing a Tiffany’s window, eating what looks like a bagel and drinking coffee in a to-go cup. She looks melancholic, or perhaps the forlorn background music of Henri Mancini’s “Moon River” on a harmonica makes her appear that way. She stands there for a few minutes, but as the sun rises further, she walks away, towards her home.
This is the opening scene from the 1961 film Breakfast at Tiffany’s, one of the most iconic romantic comedies of Hollywood. The woman in the scene, played by Audrey Hepburn, is Holly Golightly, a regular patron of fashionable cafes, or “café-society girl,” of New York (Merriam-Webster). While the scene itself is enrapturing with its landscape and music, what stands out is Holly’s attire. More specifically, her dress. Holly wears a floor-length, all-black dress with a side-slit and fashionable neckline. This dress, made by Hubert De Givenchy, a French couturier, falls in a category of dresses with a name that resonates with women across the globe even today: the “Little Black Dress,” or in short, the LBD. This seemingly regular piece of clothing has been written about extensively, portrayed numerous times in films and television, and redesigned repeatedly by couturiers around the world. But what is it about this article of clothing that makes it worthy of such attention?
While the Little Black Dress may be simple in appearance, its depiction of empowered femininity, freedom, and liberation inspires profound discussions about embracing traditionally defined ideas and cultural definitions of womanhood. This stereotypically feminine attire and its history speaks volumes about reclaiming, displaying, and propagating femininity –the set of characteristics that have been biologically, culturally, and historically associated with women– while continuing to liberate and empower the female body. Iconic designers like Coco Chanel have championed the LBD and other similar dresses as perfect instruments to reclaim and proudly display femininity while liberating the female body from the constraints of uncomfortable and impractical clothing.
However, feminist theorists like Simone De Beauvoir have called this same piece of clothing an instrument of “feminine narcissism” (Beauvoir 585). The story of the LBD and the Coco Chanel’s feminist beliefs seem to be in sharp contrast to that of Beauvoir, a contrast which reignites the debate about the nature of femininity and whether or not its existence is a myth. In a pursuit to further explore this debate and its implications regarding fashion and feminism, it is important to explore the history of LBD, investigate its rise to popularity, and analyze Chanel and Beauvoir’s respective views. In doing so, it can be argued that the little black dress, or feminine fashion of all kinds, remains alive despite ideologies like Beauvoir’s becoming extremely widespread because femininity is not a myth, but rather an active and important component of expression and liberation.
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