Just in time for Couture Week in July, Vogue contributing editor, and master cloak-wearer André Leo Talley will host an exhibition celebrating the little black dress, in collaboration with MAC. 

The exhibition at the Mona Bismarck American Center for Art and Culture in Paris from 3 July until 22 September will feature around fifty dresses by designers including Proenza Schouler, Joseph Altuzarra Yves Saint Laurent, and of course, the label that started the trend, Chanel. Of the pieces featured in the show, Talley told WWD ‘most of the dresses in the show have been selected by me because in my memory I have either seen clients wear them or I was with the client when she selected it. Or if it was more contemporary, it was a dress that I had seen in a fashion preview’, so the exhibition is by no means a retrospective. He continued ‘I am not trying to create a historical perspective of the little black dress. I wanted it to be very contemporary and based on personal experiences’.

Described by American Vogue as ‘Chanel’s Ford’ when Coco Chanel gave the previously sober piece a new and more stylish lease of life in 1926 and prompted a sartorial revolution, the little black dress or LBD has been a wardrobe staple ever since.

Andre and MAC's exhibition will launch with a party on July 1. No prizes for guessing the dress code.