Eternal darkness - why the fashion world can't live without black

Comme Des Garcons felt it was necessary to do something in response to the negativity engendered by the recession and to counter the feelings of things being blocked or stopped because of the crisis ..." So reads the typically spare press release from Japanese fashion's most feted fashion name. What's also typical is the fact that founder and designer Rei Kawakubo's "response to negativity" is a million miles away from what most of us would consider upbeat: a new label entitled BLACK. Black, of course, by its very nature, is a negative. But those familiar with the wilfully oblique workings of the mind of this particular fashion superpower will know such behaviour is at least part of the allure.

"BLACK," says Adrian Joffe, Comme des Garcons CEO and Kawakubo's husband of 17 years, "is an emergency, guerrilla-like, temporary brand", which again hardly leads one to believe the project entails anything remotely bright and breezy. "Things are difficult out there," he continues, in explanation of the move. "We're down 5 per cent in Japan [by far the brand's biggest market]. We had a hole to fill, and Rei came up with the idea of doing a whole line in black." But hang on a second: "The collection's not just black though. There's some white in it too." Consistently throughout her long and powerfully inventive career, Kawakubo has aligned herself with black. Back in the early 80s, she used it as a cry of rebellion; even in her native Tokyo the women who wore her clothes were described, with some hostility, as "the crows". Back then, after all, the bourgeois fashion establishment was still dominated by a jolie madame hourglass silhouette, chintzy fabrics and rainbow hues - the more ostentatious, the better.

Kawakubo, whose hugely successful and still entirely independent company celebrates its 40th anniversary this year, countered this with an entirely new dress code for women: trousers with sweater cuffs at the ankles, teamed with tunics that turned into shawls; oversized coats buttoned from left to right - "comme des garcons" - and boiled, seemingly shapeless knits peppered with holes. These were worn with nothing more Barbie Doll appealing than flat, even rustic shoes. And her collections were as dark as they were distressed - black almost in their entirety.

"The initial absence of colour in Kawakubo's clothes helped to trigger a new bout of the preoccupation with black that has been a recurrent theme at the margins of fashion from the 1940s and earlier," writes Deyan Sudjic in his 1990 monograph, Rei Kawakubo and Comme des Garcons. "Though black has enjoyed a continuing vogue since its adoption by the grandees of the Spanish royal court in the late 16th century, in modern times, and for women in particular, it has been a sign of a bohemian rejection of more traditional ideas about fashion."

With this in mind, the French existentialists - both male and female - were married to black. Wearing any other hue over a croque monsieur and a heated debate at Les Deux Magots was simply not done. Then came the 80s. By that point, black was becoming beautiful in a far broader sense than simply in fashion. Even so, while the young Yves Saint Laurent was famously the first designer to employ black models on the haute couture catwalk in Paris, when his 1960 Beat collection, featuring an androgynous uniform of black leather jackets and turtleneck sweaters, was first seen, scandal ensued.

Later both punk and new wave embraced black as, of course, did the Goths in their funereal and spidery garb.

By the end of the 80s, black - championed by Kawakubo - had become positively ubiquitous. The era of Thatcher and Reagan, of big, black limousines and black cocktail-wear to match meant that it was the most aspirational shade to see and be seen in. Department stores were quick to respond, designing everything in black; from toasters to refrigerators - never mind boardroom tables. Then there were Alaia viscose-knit dresses, Donna Karan bodies, Filofax diaries and Wolford tights. It's small wonder, with this in mind, that by this point Kawakubo herself had stopped using it, announcing with an obtuseness more readily associated with a conceptual artist than a fashion designer that "red is black".

Black, she said by way of explanation, had lost its power. You could find it, after all, anywhere and everywhere.

So is black the new black, to coin (not insignificantly) the greatest fashion cliche of them all? Certainly, that's the case this season which, given that it's summer, is if not unprecedented, then at least surprising. The 80s' revival currently sweeping everything from designer level down decrees that there's more black in evidence than at any time since Madonna became a household name in Desperately Seeking Susan - particularly black of the body-conscious stretch variety. A quick browse through the forthcoming collections, meanwhile, confirms that black, despite years of the industry claiming otherwise, is here to stay. Black features heavily in the collections of Yves Saint Laurent, Alexander McQueen, Lanvin, Givenchy ... The list goes on.

"We can't specifically point to black and say that it is worn more frequently during a recession," says Leatrice Eiseman, director of the Pantone Colour Institute, speaking from her office in Seattle. "We've seen a lot of black in the past 20 years when times were good and times were bad. Black seems to ride through the economy, whatever." The reason behind designers' proclivity to black, she argues, "is that it is the ultimate colour of power and strength.

Of course, at this point of time people are leaning towards practicality, and what could be more practical than black? Women in particular are drawn to black because it fills so many needs, not the least that it makes you look slimmer, and what woman doesn't want to look slimmer?

"What's more, you can spend less money on a black item and know it's not going to look as inexpensive as something that is lighter in colour, where any irregularities in finish and cut may be more obvious. Black hides a lot of flaws."

The first little black dress is most often attributed to Chanel and appeared as a simple illustration in the May 1926 issue of American Vogue. The garment in question, designed, not insignificantly, to be worn during the day, was intentionally plain.

The idea behind it was that it was for the woman who wore it to accessorise, thereby giving it the stamp of individuality and making it her own. It was a radically open-minded concept and one that encouraged comparisons to Ford's recently introduced (and also black) standarised motor car.

The little black dress's apparent ease defied the complexity of its construction, however. "Scheherazade is easy," Chanel, admittedly prone to sweeping statements, decreed. "The little black dress is difficult." Vogue predicted, nonetheless, that the LBD would go on to become "the sort of uniform for all women of taste".

It has continued to represent just that to this day.

Audrey Hepburn's pencil-thin form in little black Givenchy dress as Holly Golightly in Breakfast At Tiffany's is just one example. Jacqueline Kennedy in a simple black shift designed by Oleg Cassini at her husband John F. Kennedy's funeral another.

"I think there's the feeling generally of black being fairly sophisticated," Eiseman says. "A lot of women understand that and that's why they'll defer to black, even though they might be looking at other colours." Certainly, Chanel wasn't the last designer to identify the potential of black in the modern woman's wardrobe. More than a quarter of a century later, her arch-rival Christian Dior opined black was "the most popular and the most convenient and elegant of colours.

"It is the most slimming of all colours and, unless you have a bad complexion, it is one of the most flattering. You can wear black at any time. You can wear it at any age. You may wear it for almost any occasion."

In George Lucas' epic Star Wars movie series, Darth Vader, that be-masked and bewitching slave to "the dark side" is black. So, too, is Venom, Spiderman's deadly alter-ego, who sheds his ebony skin on to the typically blue and red-clad superhero to thoroughly unpleasant effect. The celluloid vampire is invariably clad in black garb. The term "vamp", meanwhile, suggests on one hand a predatory, sexually aware female dressed predominantly in dark colours and, at its most extreme, the dominatrix in her black rubber corsetry and gimp mask.

Black is a multi-faceted beast, associated with both humility and denial, money and power, the avant-garde and the mainstream, the radical and the conservative, good and evil, sacred and profane. There is no other colour that carries such diverse connotations, that means so many different things to different people.

- INDEPENDENT