Abstract
While menswear remained mainly dominated by black throughout the 19th century, the new bright and glowing colours of aniline dyes influenced women’s fashion, relegating black to a background trend. This article addresses the rise of black as a womenswear trend, from the popularity of “imperial black silks” during Second Empire fashion, and the revival of black in eveningwear in fin-de-siècle culture, to Chanel’s modern little black dress (1926) interpreted as the ultimate reaction against the gaudy colours inherited from the 19th century chromatic revolution. This research thus explores black as a fashionable colour related to material, popular and visual cultures, and discusses the notion of “artificial black” that emerges more generally from 19th century visual culture.
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