The 21 Best Little Black Dresses to Wear on Repeat Now and Forever

glamour.com:

or . They can cement someone as a style icon, like or Elizabeth Hurley in . At the very least, they'll definitely ensure you're the best-dressed person in the room.

Just look at the headlines for pairing hers with sheer tights and a bombshell blowout.The little black dress—or LBD, as we more commonly like to say—has endured through decades, even centuries, of style because it's a blank canvas that we can reinvent over and over again.

The same LBD can be made sophisticated and elegant for a night out, then practical for a day of work. It's why Vogue editors declared in 1926 that a black sheath dress by a young designer named Coco Chanel would “become sort of a uniform for all women of taste.” But as , the irony is that Chanel was actually jumping on a trend she dubbed la pauvreté de luxe, or “luxurious poverty.” That is, the practice of wealthy women co-opting the uniforms of the servants, shop girls, and other working-class women around them.Today, the LBD—be it a silk for , a , or a knit mini for the cooler months—is regarded as a tried-and-true .

And whatever your personal style or day-to-day needs may be, there's a little black dress for you. Below, we've shopped out 21 of the best little black dresses available.