NOTES ON FEMININITY, OR THE BIG STORY OF A LITTLE DRESS
NOTES ON FEMININITY, OR THE BIG STORY OF A LITTLE DRESS

Summary/Abstract: In 1926 Coco Chanel designed the little black dress and this marked the beginning of the remarkablelongevity of this garment in the world of fashion. This longevity embodies the paradox of beingalways in fashion in a world of transience. This paradox allows us to see in the little black dressa unique story unraveling between the body and the dress, which represents the woman beyondephemeral fashion and gives femininity a unique status. The little black dress is a phenomenonwhich affords us the opportunity to reveal some fundamental characteristics of the modern waysof constituting the body and femininity. An important question to answer here is how philosophycan address the understanding of this particular phenomenon. I think that even though thereconstruction of this phenomenon within the confines of the specific cultural and historicalcontext could yield important considerations, this approach is more likely to hinder understandingbecause it fails to highlight the uniqueness and integrity of the subject being studied. Therefore,this text employs a different approach: understanding is only possible through a phenomenologicalinterpretation of the “interplay” between the body, the colour black and the smallness of thedress — that is, through a phenomenological interpretation of the relationship that exists betweenthe black clothing and the body and the “work of the small”. The main premise is that this “interplay”temporalises the body thus rendering the little black dress a phenomenon of time above all. Thebody leaves the physical mode of existence whereby natural femininity becomes historical andbiographical. Within this context the mystique and allure of femininity are not so much exuded bythe physicality of the body as are connoted by the body’s representation as a concealed story anda hidden biography. In this way the woman is enabled into a new form of existence — that of a story;however, this is not a story of the natural woman, but the story of a biographically individuatedfemininity. This gives new dimensions to the erotic inasmuch as it goes beyond the erotic that stemsfrom the immediate sensation and image and becomes the erotic that stems from the imagination.

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