Fade to Black : They May Lack the Punch of Crimson, the Glisten of Silver and Gold, but There’s Nothing Somber or Monastic About These Little Numbers
“Iseem to remember the little black dress spontaneously generating on Audrey Hepburn in ‘Breakfast at Tiffany’s,’ ” muses Ellen Melinkoff, author of “What We Wore,” a book on fashion history.
“To me that’s the beginning: She wore a little black dress, a big hat and carried a long cigarette holder.”
More than three decades later, women have left behind the anachronistic hat and ditched the cigarette, but they’ve elevated the Little Black Dress to the status of fashion staple, much like a string of pearls or the perfect white T-shirt.
While this season offers one of the best and most varied selections of Little Black Dresses in recent memory, the modern Holly Golightly may have a bit of a problem tracking them down. It’s an all-or-nothing scenario: Either a store has virtually nothing to choose from or it’s a treasure trove.
Partly by default, there’s a big selection in higher prices (ranging from $330 for a private label to several thousand for designer frocks by Karl Lagerfeld and Thierry Mugler) at Fred Hayman Beverly Hills.
“We hadn’t intended to buy this many,” says owner Fred Hayman. “But the alternatives weren’t really there. We couldn’t find clear, luscious color. Designers did a lot of green and Bordeaux, and we don’t buy those murky colors because this is California.”
So black got the nod more often than not, and now about 60% of Hayman’s dress stock is in the color.
“Women have been coming in asking for color,” says a salesperson from a neighboring Beverly Hills shop. “But they always walk out with black. It always looks better.”
Other stores with above-par selections of pricier--$200 and up--dresses include Fred Segal Melrose, Ice and Jessica McClintock. You’ll find slim, sculpted soot-black velvet dresses, like the one worn by “Madame X” in John Singer Sargent’s famous painting, and lean columns in crepe or crinkled fabrics.
On the lower end of the price spectrum, Hollywood Boulevard’s Playmates and Contempo Casuals shops citywide are loaded with Little Black Dresses, most of them less than $100.
At Contempo are lots of body-hugging knit dresses. Besides interesting fabrics like stretch panne velvet, look for embroidery and embellishments. The Contempo stock is evenly divided between short and long hemlines, and the latter are selling in slightly greater numbers.
Standout silhouettes this season:
* The Modern Flapper. Called “car-wash” dresses because the skirts are slit into narrow panels, they come in short and long versions by labels Nicole Miller and ABS. This dress looks great on the dance floor.
* The Dinner Dress. Note the mistake made by Julia Roberts at the Oscars ceremony two years ago: Don’t pick a dress with all the detail at the hem. Photos of the actress, generally from the waist up, showed only a somber, practically monastic black dress. The pretty beading on the skirt was off-camera.
Likewise, if you’ll be dining, the best details should be above the tablecloth, as in sculpted collars, pearl-encrusted bra tops and scalloped or curlicue-edged necklines. Designers spare you the embarrassment of errant bra straps by building cups right into the low-cut numbers.
* The Sexy Tuxedo Dress. Ralph Lauren had the right idea, but then he made it in navy. For a chic, curvy version in ebony, Thierry Mugler does it best.
* The Little Black Grunge Dress. Take a dress in a luxurious fabric, watch a few Nirvana videos, lose your comb and add some fashion sludge, like a plaid lumberjack shirt tied around the waist or a knit skull cap.
* The Decorated Dress. They’re studded with jet beads or trimmed with sequined lace and gold embroideries. Or the dress is in a fabric that shimmers with metallic sparkles resembling the glittery new pavement on Hollywood Boulevard. These less demure dresses are the ones Holly Golightly would have likely chosen today, as she wore the Little Black Dress to shock and stand out from, rather than to blend into, the crowd.
