Ensemble

By putting quotation marks around that hallowed icon of modern French chic, the little black dress as proposed by Gabrielle Chanel in 1926, Virgil Abloh takes René Magritte's statement about the treachery of images ("this is not a pipe," 1929) one step further. Whereas Magritte underlined the ironic difference between signifier and signified, Abloh doubles the veracity of the content (the object states it is, and indeed it is, a little black dress), and thereby neutralizes it. His satirical "little black dress" is a neo-Duchampian gesture questioning the notion of high art as expressed by the notion of haute couture, through the medium of a little black knitted dress, and leather boots made "for walking." Like the original "T Ford" dress, it is a commentary about the status of the artwork in times of mass production and replication, through the addition of whimsical quotation marks.