Sydney Sweeney and the return of the little black dress: from Dior and Chanel’s classic LBDs to Princess Diana’s ‘revenge dress’ and Jennifer Aniston, the ultimate wardrobe staple stills slays

May 25 , 2024

Return of the little black dress? From Dior and Chanel originals and Princess Diana’s ‘revenge dress’, to LBDs looks from Sydney Sweeney and Jennifer Aniston, the wardrobe staple continues to slay. Photo: Getty

Christian Dior, Coco Chanel and Cristóbal Balenciaga each had takes on the little black dress in the 50s – fast-forward to today and Miu Miu presented modern iterations at the most recent Paris Fashion Week

Audrey Hepburn and Princess Diana are LBD icons of the 20th century, Jennifer Aniston has rocked the look for decades, and Sydney Sweeney recently donned three LBDs in the space of 24 hours

It’s difficult to think of a piece of clothing more entwined with culture and fashion history than the little black dress (LBD). Whether worn by Princess Diana as an act of “revenge” and royal rule breaking in 1994, or Audrey Hepburn as she nibbled on a croissant in 1961’s Breakfast at Tiffany’s, the LBD is known for making an impact. As fashion historian Valerie Steele notes in her book, The Black Dress, the garment is present throughout art and literature. In Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, the doomed heroine was dressed in “a black, low-cut velvet gown”, while Edith Wharton’s Ellen Olenska, in The Age of Innocence, created a minor scandal by wearing a black gown to her coming-out ball.

Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel is often, somewhat erroneously, credited with inventing the LBD – but she certainly popularised it in the 1920s.

Diana, Princess of Wales, in her famous-infamous “revenge dress” from Christina Stambolian, pictured in London in 1994. Photo: Getty Images

“Scheherazade is easy,” Chanel once said, rather sneeringly, of her pastel and poufy competition at the time. “A little black dress is difficult.”

In a 1926 issue of Vogue, a sketch of a long-sleeved sheath dress by Coco Chanel was published with the breathless edict that it would “become sort of a uniform for all women of taste”.

Audrey Hepburn in a still from the classic Hollywood film Breakfast at Tiffany’s, in which the actress was stunning in a black Givenchy dress. Photo: AP Photo/Christie’s

Elsa Schiaparelli, one of Chanel’s enemies, wrote in her autobiography, Shocking Life, that despite the surrealist creations her fashion house was known for, many of her clients and their husbands preferred “severe suits and plain black dresses”.

It’s a truism that black is always in style. The LBD was beloved by designers from Cristóbal Balenciaga to Christian Dior, both of whom believed black could be worn at any time. At the most recent Paris season, Miu Miu closed out the show with a run of knee-length, saucy yet sophisticated black dresses – one worn with a fur coat, others with elbow-length gloves and Mary-Jane shoes.

A little black dress from Miu Miu’s autumn-winter 2024 collection, shown at this year’s Paris Fashion Week. Photo: Handout

Does it not say much about the universal appeal of an LBD that you can wear one as much as a gamine 20-something flitting about a party, as you can as a grande dame at a charity lunch?