While black is traditionally reserved for mourning, Gabrielle Chanel will shake up codes and create her own version of the black dress. In contrast to the overloaded style of the 1920s, Coco Chanel offers a sober and elegant model. A woman of character with a boyish cut, the seamstress is the first to wear her creations against the trend of her time.

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American Vogue nicknamed it "Chanel's Ford, the dress the whole world will wear". In fact, just like the famous automobile, Chanel's little black dress will tear off all over the world. To the point of becoming an unavoidable and forever timeless piece of the women's wardrobe.

Directed by the Hollywood star designer Jean-Louis Berthault at the time, the black satin sheath dress worn by Rita Hayworth in the movie "Gilda" has made her one of the undisputed icons of glamor. Chanting the words of "Put the Blame on Mame", the goddess of love, as it was nicknamed, undertakes a striptease of the most sensual. Mythical.

One of the iconic figures of cinema has also marked the history of fashion by its crazy look. In "Fenêtre sur cour", Alfred Hitchcock 's favorite actress , was dressed by American costume designer Edith Head, who won the Academy Award for Best Costume Design eight times. Grace Kelly is remembered in Dior's sumptuous black dress with Dior's New Look, with a fitted bodice embellished with veiled shoulders.

It was in a dress designed by her friend Hubert de Givenchy that Audrey Hepburn reached the peak of elegance in "Diamonds on sofa". In the streets of New York, dressed in a three-hole dress and a pearl necklace, the sophisticated Holly Golightly daydreams behind her tinted glasses, croissant and coffee in hand, in front of the jeweler Tiffany's window . A cult mode scene and the most noticed role of his career.

In "Belle de jour" by Luis Bu ñ el, Catherine Deneuve takes on the air of a young girl from a good family wearing a sober black dress at Col Claudine. The legendary icon of French cinema becomes friends with the couturier who dresses him who is none other than Yves Saint Laurent and becomes his muse.

Impossible to forget the vertiginous neckline revealing the fall of kidney Mireille Darc in the film of Yves Robert "The big blond with a black shoe". As a femme fatale, the actress seduces in a split second by turning in a dress imagined by her friend the French couturier Guy Laroche. A memorable cinematic moment when Pierre Richard discovers his partner's outfit for the very first time under his eyes. From the front, the classicism of her dress gives her a sober elegance that leaves no indication of what lies behind.

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More than forty years after this mythical scene, Guy Laroche's Spring-Summer 2018 parade paid tribute to the icon of French cinema that disappeared on August 28, 2017. Richard René, freshly named artistic director of the fashion house, was parading on the catwalk of the models wearing blond squares in her bare back designs reminiscent of the legendary kidney fall of the actress.

The photographers called it "that dress" and it made a lot of ink. Who else but the king of extravagance, the star designer of the time Gianni Versace, could be at the origin of this outrageously sexy dress? Simply restrained by safety pins, it reveals to the extreme both the neckline and hips. While only known as Hugh Grant's girlfriend , young actress Liz Hurley highlighted by Versace hit the headlines.

Lady Di has appeared many times in sumptuous black dresses but one in particular will be remembered. The "revenge dress" of Diana Spencer owes its name to the Princess's thumbs up to the adultery of her husband. Indeed, she wore this dress the very evening of the televised confession of Prince Charles about his affair with Camilla Parker-Bowles . At the time of presenting this dress with bare shoulders to the Princess, the Greek designer Christina Stambolian feared she would find it "too bold". But in terms of fashion, Diana has always been against the flow of the royal family, and that night more than ever.