Fancy a Little Black Dress? I should Coco - Fiona Duff

I feel I might be slightly lagging on this one but earlier this week I went to the Little Black Dress exhibition at the National Museum.

Models Shannon Summers, Grace Dempsey and Joshua Cairns pose outside the National Museum of Scotland ahead of the opening of Beyond the Little Black Dress

My friend and I walked around looking at some of the most lovely creations from designers all over the world. A dress designed for Princess Margaret was beautiful, and who would have guessed that she had such a tiny waist? Mind you I think she was a teeny tot anyway. The desire to snaffle one or two of the dresses was quickly quashed as I realised that my handbag wasn’t large enough.

For some reason looking at all the designs got us on to talking about how people rarely wear black to funerals these days. I think it might be because before Coco Channel came up with the idea that the devil’s own dye would make a good choice for a dress for women to wear to cocktail parties it was a colour that us females would keep for mourning. Of course, these days it’s the go-to for whenever we can’t really decide what to wear or what might clash when worn together. Guilty as charged on that one. m’Lud.

Anyway, I am off to visit a friend at the weekend and suppose I should pack something apart from jeans as we are going out on Saturday night. I don’t think that it is a particularly smart place, and eyebrowns might be raised a tad if I was to enter wearing an LBD and a few strings of chunky pearls. More of a ‘nae trainers’ dress code I reckon, although considering most sports shoes cost more than any other footwear I don’t really understand that.

However, I do think I should invest in a really good black dress which I can wear when I do go somewhere fancy. Otherwise I may just go back to the museum (there is a discount for EH postcode dwellers) and next time I shall take a bigger bag.