Every time someone derides fashion as non-serious or a kitty-party pursuit, I smile an inner smile. This is the classic example of the ‘sour grapes’ complex. Of course, you don’t like a system you don’t know how to operate under.

Rather than buckle down and learn, you choose to act superior.

I am going to say now what I should have said then, that fashion is symbolism of the skin. It is customised art that moves as you move. It is personalised architecture, it can lead to revolutions, be a revenge fantasy and build a career. And a single item can do that: The Little Black Dress.

Before the infamous Versace safety-pin dress on the red carpet, Liz Hurley was Hugh Grant’s girlfriend. After it, she was a star. Lady Diana stepping out in Christina Stambolian’s LBD after her divorce, echoed across the universe what every girl wants to let her ex know: “This is what you can’t have.” It was dubbed the ‘revenge dress’, and for good reason.

But the biggest contribution to the LBD came from a quiet Parisian corner where a young designer met a budding actress in his atelier and almost brushed her off because he was too preoccupied. I, of course, refer to the most enduring relationship in the history of fashion that gave birth to the most iconic little black dress of all time: Audrey Hepburn and Hubert de Givenchy.

Many threads of happenstance had to come together for this dress to be a style landmark now. Coco Chanel, the fountainhead of everything fashion, had made black fashionable, “for black wipes out everything else around”. Capote had written a story about a ladder-climbing socialite gold-digger in the Manhattan of the ’60s. (Capote is not a merry writer, y’all. Please read In Cold Blood .) Just goes to show that anything can be made fashion fantasy if it is set to music by Henri Mancini, styled by Givenchy and adorned by queen-of-cute Hepburn.

And so came about the opening scene of Breakfast at Tiffany’s , where you see a waif-thin and covetous Hepburn eat a scone and coffee, looking longingly at a store window at the height of American capitalism.

The little black dress was Chanel’s offering to the fashion world, to democratise style for everyone to access. Givenchy added the elbow gloves, the floor-length sheath with the high slit, the curved back that displayed Hepburn’s small rounded shoulders and pronounced shoulder blades, an extravagant amount of pearls, a foot-long cigarette holder, and gave us the complete vision of glamour in the ’60s that is still relevant.

Chanel gave us the evening uniform LBD, classic, appropriate and fashionable. Givenchy lent his aristocratic air and made it aspirational for the cocktail hour. Both come to it with the idea of clean long lines, but where Chanel is aiming for functionality, Givenchy gives restrained elegance.

Givenchy, in that sense, was a modern designer. Not only did he lay strong emphasis on styling but he also introduced separates and mix-and-match clothing in the couture world that was always designing full looks. If Hepburn called him the creator of personality, it was because his designs allowed women to express themselves, to move, to play with clothing creatively, not distance oneself as armour. Therefore the clothes were more personable.

Givenchy knew that power doesn’t scream. Like a Miranda Priestly or a Hannibal Lecter, his (style) tone was always composed, subtle and sure. It is no surprise he dressed royalty and first ladies. Jackie Kennedy, Wallis Simpson, and the Spanish royalty were among his many champions.

Dior, YSL and he were part of the holy trinity that cemented Paris as the fashion capital of the world in the post-World War II era. While Dior had ‘the new look’, YSL had the smoking jacket, Givenchy had Hepburn. A muse who matched his affinity for restrained elegance and wore him consistently for 40 years. He, in turn, is said to have designed only with her in mind, also giving us the famous Sabrina neckline.

Breakfast at Tiffany’s might have been your first instance of coming across a Givenchy, but let that not be your last. This man defined the fashion landscape of the ’60s, a Count by birth and the Prince of cut, he passed away on March 10, 2018, leaving the world more beautiful than when he entered it.

And, as for that gentleman I couldn’t say all this to, don’t worry. It went like this.

Him: I don’t really care for fashion.

Me: Oh, don’t mention it, I can tell.

Blue Stocking is a Delhi-based writer looking at fiction, film and feminism through the lens of fashion

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