Evening dress

Gabrielle Chanel is the designer most responsible for establishing the modern way of dressing that encompasses comfort, function and simplicity. Following the first World War, the artistic and social mood was ripe for the pared-down, angular, sportif look that she represented, and her "casual chic" sensibility dominated fashion throughout the 1920s. While Chanel introduced the concept of the "little black dress" into fashion vocabulary, this example shows just how refined and varied the examples she designed could be. Here, strands of beads join to form an interlace pattern that defines the bust, the dropped waist and the dropped hipline. What appears to be simply a tubular beaded dress reveals itself as more complex and intriguing in the way the surface treatment references and delineates the body of the woman who wore it.