'[E]motional' black

'During the second half of the nineteenth century, as Anne Hollander has pointed out, there were two sorts of black clothing, 'the conventionally sober, self-denying black and the dramatic, isolating, and distinguishing black. . . . '[E]motional' black could be of fragile velvet, superfine wool, or silk gauze, and intricately cut and trimmed, sometimes with black glitter. Null black was economical and hard-wearing and did not show stains, and looked it.''

'Allison Lurie, The Language of Clothes, 1981. Quoting from Seeing Through Clothes by Anne Hollander, 1978.