Hallelujah — at last we can get back to black
LAST week I bought . . . a black velvet dress. This time last year I’d have said the chances of me buying a black anything, let alone a dress, were the same as my chances of buying leather overalls. Less than zero.
It’s not long since I handed on almost all the black velvet in my wardrobe — a few jackets, a trouser suit, a sleeveless evening dress — to my stepdaughter, keeping back only the floppy wide trousers. The rest of the black I said goodbye to in early 2021 without a backward glance.
Black has felt like the opposite of life-enhancing for a while. You don’t come out of lockdown and rush to put on your best black, and, like most fashionconscious women, I’m proud of having turned my back on black in favour of experimenting with colour and print.
The Anything But Black mood of recent years got us all out of a rut, and we’ll never go back to the way we were.
even so, last week I bought a little black dress — though naturally not little in that it’s long-sleeved, with a tea-dress fit, a mid-calf hem and a high, round neck (£350, meandem. com) — and it felt like coming home. Simple and stark yet luxurious and feminine. Plain and austere but also dramatic and elegant.
With boots, this is a low-key occasion dress; lushed up with earrings, lipstick and slingbacks, it’s a cocktail cracker; swathed in a bright wrap with chunkier boots, it’s a smart day dress that’s easily vamped up for evening. (It has a hook and a short zip at the front, so you can wear it with a keyhole of flesh on show, or opennecked and lower.)
BUTthat’s just a reminder of the benefits of a good black dress, it’s not quite why I bought it. The real reason is that the right thing in black is so standalone easy. There’s just nothing that allows you to dress simply and look stylish quite like black and nothing that requires so little thought.
And now, partly because of the intervening break from black — and, if I’m being honest, the great colour bonanza has got a bit tiring — and partly because we find ourselves living in sober times (hands up who is really in the mood for hot pink tailoring?), black has started to look tempting again.
Black plus gold or pearl drop earrings. A black blazer. even a black polo-neck and black trousers.
I’m not talking about getting back to black the way we were — not women over 50, anyway, or 40 come to that.
Twenty years ago the rule was everything looks better in black. Now the rule is use black to give you a strong look when you need it.
Don’t scuttle back to dull black suiting for work, but a pair of well-cut, wider trousers from Mango (£25.99, johnlewis. with a little black jacket over a high- collared shirt or ivory polo-neck would be just the ticket.
Make a point of wearing black items of different textures together — tweed and wool, corduroy and silk — and look for details such as gold buttons or ruched cuffs.
Plain, flat black is what’s draining and light-absorbing, and black in flimsy fabrics can look like yesterday’s news as well as dull in both senses.
Don’t even think about crepe or a comfy jersey wrap dress at this point: black is not for building-block basics, it’s for smartening up with style, which is why inky soft wool, velvet and needlecord are our friends; they’re the most flattering to skin, too.
A little black jacket or a blazer — Mango does a wellcut double-breasted style with chunky gold buttons (£69.99, shop.mango.com) and a neat tweedy four- pocket style (£59.99) — dresses up dark or black denim.
Black trousers are once again the fall-back solution for evenings, and the smart answer is glossy needlecord — try Massimo dutti (£ 69.95, massimodutti. or velvet. Zara does some good, narrow, velvet flares (£49.99, zara.com) and hush has a floppy pair of trousers with an optional matching blazer (£85 and £129, hush-uk.com), which adds up to a new-look relaxed trouser suit that you can dress down with trainers or up with a camisole and slingbacks.
As for the LBD, you’re at risk of looking like you’ve rescued something from your Nineties’ pile if you go too fitted or succumb to sheer sleeves, so aim for demure with a twist. Aspiga’s black viscose velvet midi dress (£250, aspiga.com) looks like a classic keeper.