ABSTRACT
The dress reform movement proclaimed an opposition that was repeated in the architectural literature between decoration and function. Quite apart from this dress, grey and black have marched to the fore. Indeed black itself is equally iconic as the backdrop to modern dress. Once again, however, there is little reason to see the little black dress and subsequent general adoption of black by women as related in any way to this. Decoration in dress is associated by the reformers with the phenomenon of fashion, and this in turn with superficiality and with women. One of the extended examples presented in A. Clarke and D. Miller 2002 was a woman – Charmaigne – who sets out to buy a floral dress, in a deliberate attempt to expand out of her conventional wardrobe and to try and associate herself with this other genre of clothing.
