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

In 1926 Coco Chanel designed the little black dress and this marked the beginning of the remarkable longevity of this garment in the world of fashion. This longevity embodies the paradox of being always in fashion in a world of transience. This paradox allows us to see in the little black dress a unique story unraveling between the body and the dress, which represents the woman beyond ephemeral fashion and gives femininity a unique status. The little black dress is a phenomenon which affords us the opportunity to reveal some fundamental characteristics of the modern ways of constituting the body and femininity. An important question to answer here is how philosophy can address the understanding of this particular phenomenon. I think that even though the reconstruction of this phenomenon within the confines of the specific cultural and historical context could yield important considerations, this approach is more likely to hinder understanding because 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 phenomenological interpretation of the “interplay” between the body, the colour black and the smallness of the dress — that is, through a phenomenological interpretation of the relationship that exists between the 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. The body leaves the physical mode of existence whereby natural femininity becomes historical and biographical. Within this context the mystique and allure of femininity are not so much exuded by the physicality of the body as are connoted by the body's representation as a concealed story and a 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 individuated femininity. This gives new dimensions to the erotic inasmuch as it goes beyond the erotic that stems from the immediate sensation and image and becomes the erotic that stems from the imagination.