Top Ten Tuesday – THE TOP TEN BLACK DRESSES IN THE MOVIES

The Little Black Dress—From Mourning to Night is a free exhibit currently at The Missouri History Museum (Lindell and DeBaliviere in Forest Park, St. Louis, Missouri). The exhibit runs through September 5th.

The Little Black Dress – a simple, short cocktail dress—is a sartorial staple for most contemporary women. Prior to the early 20th century, simple, unadorned black garments were limited to mourning, and strict social rules regarding mourning dress were rigidly observed.Featuring over 60 dresses from the Missouri History Museum’s world-renowned textile collection, this fun yet thought-provoking exhibit explores the subject of mourning, as well as the transition of black from a symbol of grief to a symbol of high fashion. You’ll also see fascinating artifacts—from hair jewelry to tear catchers—that were once a regular part of the mourning process. Plus, you’ll have the chance to share your own memories of your favorite little black dress and even get the opportunity to design your own dress! (details on the exhibit can be found HERE)

A good dress does more than look pretty on screen. It creates some of cinema’s best moments.The movies have always influenced style and fashion, so we decided, to tie into the exhibit, that it would be fun to list the ten most iconic black dresses in film history (and the actresses who rocked them).

10. Clara Bow in IT (1927)

Coco Chanel introduced her famous ‘Little Black Dress’ in the mid-1920’s. Before then, women only wore black for mourning. It was after the premiere of the 1927 silent hit IT, that the black dress became acceptable evening wear.  IT is beloved by silent movie fans, but remains popular with a wider audience and continues to be culturally relevant because of costume design that was influential both then and now. IT helped pave the way for black to become the beauty basic it is today. The film starred Clara Bow as a shop girl who is asked out by the store’s wealthy owner. As you watch the silent film you can see the excitement as she prepared for her date with the boss, her girlfriend trying hard to assist her. She was trying to use a pair of scissors to modify her dress in order to look more “sexy”. This movie did a lot to change society’s mores as there was only a few years between World War I and Clara Bow, but this movie went a long way in how society looked at itself. Clara was flaming youth in rebellion.  the personification of the flaming Roaring Twenties,  and the title “IT” was as a euphemism for “sex appeal”. Travis Banton was the star costume designer at Paramount during the studio’s heyday of glamour and sophistication in the 1930’s and was well-known for designing costumes for Mae West and Marlene Dietrich.

9.Marilyn Monroe in THE ASPHALT JUNGLE (1950)

Not an iconic dress (in fact, no costumer designer is even listed in the credits), but THE ASPHALT JUNGLE is notable in that it’s the film that introduced audiences to Marilyn Monroe (not her first film appearance but her first substantial part). She played Angela Phinlay, a “keptie” (kept woman) who appears in a this sexy black dress. Marilyn stole every scene she was in despite not even being listed on most opening night posters. Marilyn didn’t like wearing black in films, and later in her career, when she had more control over her wardrobe, she was rarely seen in it.

8. Liza Minnelli in CABARET (1972)

Okay, Liza does not wear a black dress in CABARET – but she did rock this iconic black ensemble. The outfit — a bowler hat and vest (with no shirt) atop hot pants, garters, stockings and boots — was heightened by its blackness against Minnelli’s ultra-white skin and siren-red lipstick. To achieve the authentic look of pre-Hitler Berlin’s “divine decadence,” director-choreographer Bob Fosse chose a German production designer and costumer. Charlotte Flemming had grown up in the Weimer Berlin of the movie’s setting and spent her entire career in the German film industry. She never “went Hollywood.” Minnelli, of course, was born there, the daughter of Judy Garland and director Vincente Minnelli.

7. Bette Davis in NOW VOYAGER (1942)

NOW VOYAGER (1942) was a fashion film if ever there was one, and one which emphasized the power of clothes. After all, the sack-like dresses that the troubled Charlotte Vale (Bette Davis) wears reflect her psychological state, and as she is transformed from browbeaten nervous wreck into a worldly woman with a newfound confidence. Her outfits  – designed by the great Orry-Kelly (who was the head costume designer at The Muny Opera in St. Louis in the early 1930’s) goes from dowdy spinster to chic fashion-plate. So much so that she attracts a suave man on her maiden voyage as a new woman. In NOW VOYAGER , Davis played Charlotte Vale, a frumpy spinster who lives under the control of her cantankerous mother. With the help of a kindly psychiatrist, she has a mental and physical makeover and becomes a glamorous woman who is able to help out the similarly oppressed young daughter of the man she loves. Davis led the way for actresses who “ugly up” as a fast track to Oscar nomination, starting the film in sensible lace-ups, glasses and beetle-brows. Her transformation resulted in stunning chiffon gowns and glittering capes which prove that nobody needs to show a lot of flesh when a 1940s number with a gathered waist and shoulder pads will do the job. To play Charlotte before her transformation, Davis asked Orry-Kelly to pad her figure to suggest extra weight, then she had makeup artist Percy Westmore give her thicker eyebrows. Her look in the film was a compromise. Originally she had wanted a more extreme look, but Wallis considered it too grotesque. Orry-Kelly was the chief costume designer for Warner Bros. Studios from 1932 to 1944. He worked on more than 300 films during his career.

6. Joan Crawford in MILDRED PIERCE (1943)

Joan Crawford was always known for her broad shoulders, a style that was displayed to perfection in MILDRED PIERCE, the 1943 film that won the actress her only Oscar. Housewife Mildred Pierce moves from aprons to fur coats after her husband leaves her and she opens a successful restaurant. Joan played the title character, a selfless mother who does everything she can to provide for her two kids, but her oldest daughter Veda (Ann Blyth) is an ungrateful brat who looks down on Mildred for making her way up in the world through simple hard work and dedication. She doesn’t, however have any problem spending mom’s money, and after a while starts smoking and speaking in pretentious French phrases. Everybody sees that the daughter is bad news, but Mildred assures them: “You don’t know what it’s like being a mother. Veda’s a part of me. Maybe she didn’t turn out as well as I hoped she would when she was born, but she’s still my daughter and I can’t forget that.” During filming, director Michael Curtiz fought with the actress over her wardrobe. She was told to buy clothes “off the rack” to look like the working mother the film was about. But Joan refused to look dowdy, and had Warner Bros. costumer Milo Anderson fit the waists and pad out the shoulders. Anderson was a top wardrobe designer at Warner Brothers from 1933 to 1952 and worked on costumes for such classics as ADVENTURES OF ROBIN HOOD (1938), TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT (1944), and YANKEE DOODLE DANDY (1942).

5. Grace Kelly in REAR WINDOW (1954)

Alfred Hitchcock’s REAR WINDOW (1954) is not only a masterpiece of suspense; it’s also something of a fashion show with Grace Kelly’s Lisa Freemont trotting out one gorgeous summer ensemble after another for both our and James Stewart’s delight. After all, as James Stewart’s character Jeff Jefferies points out – this is the Lisa Freemont “who never wears the same dress twice”. The costumes in REAR WINDOW were designed by that doyenne of movie designers, Edith Head, who was nominated for 28 Oscars and won 8 times. According to Jay Jorgensen’s book, Edith Head – The Fifty Year Career of Hollywood’s Greatest Costume Designer, Hitchcock’s directive to Ms. Head was that Grace “was to look like a piece of Dresden china, nearly untouchable”. And yet, for most of the movie, it’s Lisa who is trying to seduce the incapacitated (with broken his leg) Jeff … For her second seduction scene – where she’s thwarted by Stewart’s obsession with his neighbors and the possibility that one of them has bumped off his wife – Lisa is a vision of sophistication in a black chiffon dress and ever-present pearls, a triple strand necklace.

4.  Anita Ekberg in LA DOLCE VITA (1960)

There is sexy, and then there is Anita Eckberg, whose voluptuous figure splashing around the Trevi Fountain in Rome in Federico Fellini’s 1960 masterpiece LA DOLCE VITA, while wearing that bellissima black dress, was the ultimate symbol of male fantasy. The film won the Academy Award in 1960 for Best Costumes, thanks in large part to the black sleeveless gown that Miss Eckberg displayed in that famous scene. Costume designer Piero Gherardi worked in neo-realist Italian cinema from 1954 to 1971, notably on four key films by Federico Fellini. LA DOLCE VITA, 8 ½ (1963 – which also won him the Oscar), NIGHTS OF CABIRIA (1957), and JULIET OF THE SPIRIT (1965).

3. Rita Hayworth in GILDA (1946)

Before there was bad girl nightclub singer Jessica Rabbit there was Gilda, a bad girl nightclub singer played by Rita Hayworth in the 1946 film of the same name. Wearing a black strapless dress, Gilda ends her marriage to casino owner Ballin Mundson (George Macready) with a striptease to the song “Put the Blame on Mame.” That little number was so explosively sexual that the name Gilda was written on the first nuclear bomb tested after World War II. In GILDA, Hayworth was the ultimate femme fatale, the woman every man wanted to have. The role sealed Hayworth’s status in Hollywood, and gave her an unforgettable movie legacy. According to the posters, ‘There never was a woman like Gilda’, and clearly, there was never a wardrobe like hers either. Designed by Jean Louis, her costumes cost $60,000 dollars, and it was money well spent. The movie was a critical and commercial success, no doubt thanks to Gilda and her perpetual near nakedness – for despite that pricy wardrobe, a surprising amount of Gilda was on show. Jean Louis designed a wardrobe that allowed Gilda to flash her shoulders, and hinted at her bosom through translucent tops. Hayworth’s beauty was the stuff of pin-up legend and in 1949 her lips were voted the best in the business by the Artist’s league of America. Asked what held up the famous black satin dress, Hayworth answered “two things”.

2. Audrey Hepburn in BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY’S (1961)

There’s almost no black dress more iconic than the French designer Hubert De Givenchy’s sheath that Holly Golightly, played by Audrey Hepburn, wore to go window shopping at her favorite jewelry store in BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY’S (1961). Paired with a pearl necklace, long black gloves, a tiara, a pair of dark sunglasses and a cup of deli coffee, Hepburn’s look continues to define New York (and Hollywood) chic. Givenchy made two versions of the famous black gown gown: one which was completely straight and was for the actress to wear as she stood still outside Tiffany’s, and one which had a slit so she could walk in it. She’s glimpsed wearing the same dress again a few scenes later. Indeed, one of the surprises about BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY’S  is that there aren’t that many different dresses – the same ones pop up more than once, but with different accessories. BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY’S  is undoubtedly the film which cemented Audrey Hepburn’s status as a style icon and linked her forever more in the fashion-conscious public’s mind thanks to De Givenchy, who had previously dressed her for SABRINA and FUNNY FACE.

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