The best little black dresses do more than serve as a solid wardrobe staple. They can send a powerful message, like Princess Diana’s famous revenge dress or Janelle Monáe’s homage to the uniforms of her ancestors. They can cement someone as a style icon, like Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany‘s or Elizabeth Hurley in that Versace safety pin dress. At the very least, they’ll definitely ensure you’re the best-dressed person in the room. Just look at the headlines Zendaya made for pairing hers with sheer tights and a bombshell blowout.
Princess Diana, in her 1994 “revenge dress” Tim Graham/Getty Images
Zendaya on a date with boyfriend Tom Holland in 2022.Gotham
The little black dress—or LBD, as we more commonly like to say—has endured through decades, even centuries, of style because it’s a blank canvas that we can reinvent over and over again. The same LBD can be made sophisticated and elegant for a night out, then practical for a day of work. It’s why Vogue editors declared in 1926 that a black sheath dress by a young designer named Coco Chanel would “become sort of a uniform for all women of taste.” But as The Atlantic reports, the irony is that Chanel was actually jumping on a trend she dubbed la pauvreté de luxe, or “luxurious poverty.” That is, the practice of wealthy women co-opting the uniforms of the servants, shop girls, and other working-class women around them.
Today, the LBD—be it a silk slip dress for spring, a breezy linen style for summer, or a knit mini for the cooler months—is regarded as a tried-and-true wardrobe essential. And whatever your personal style or day-to-day needs may be, there’s a little black dress for you. Below, we’ve shopped out 21 of the best little black dresses available. Buy them now and enjoy wearing them for years to come—because as we’ve learned, the LBD never goes out of style.
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