A Study on Formality and Symbolism in Black Dress

흑색의상의 조형성과 상징성에 관한 연구

Since the costume directly express human mental and emotional status, colors of costume can be valuable data to grasp the spirit of the times. Black is noticeably used in modern fashion and the study for black costume is very useful to understand modern fashion. There-fore the study mainly approaches the black costume, finding its background of appearance and symbolism, reviews the symbolism and formality of black expressed in the field of paint-ing and design beyond the fashion, and compar-es to fashion. The study result of the thesis is as follows ; First, black as a color is a one to light other neighboring colors, while it is a static, con-tractible and outstandigly attractived color. Second, black color traditionally symbolizes death, earth, air, North and inferior level and in the painting, it symbolized death, despair, fantastic world and the expression of pent-up self, while cities have been symbolized in the black printing in modern times. In the design, black has appeared with the industrial society, which symbolizes functionality and modernity. Third, black in the fashion design was symbolized death, sternness simplicity, modernity, sex, resistance and so on. Death became conspicious by a religious factor since the old times, sternness was influenced by Spanish fashion in the 16th century, simplicity by Dutch fashion in the 17th century and modernity by Baudelaire dandyism and Chanel little black dress, while sex and resistance were urged to the modern times by teenage inferior culture and stickiness to sex. Fourth, the formative features of black costume prefer simplicity, tightness and bareness in form, and in material, usually used glancing materials changed by the effect of light, lace, see-through fabric and matte one with depth. As a result, the black color is summarized to symbol death, expression of self and modernity. It is not a color of emotion but of mentality and artificial one against nature. Black color in fashion gets a strong power to express self in the symbolic aspect and draws a higher attention on human body than the fashion itself. By these features, black costume will be continuously prefered in spite of changes of the fashion.