Elegant style icon wardrobe essentials: Maria Callas in black dress

Professionally, the year 1941 was the year of landmark for Maria Callas, perhaps the greatest female opera singer in the history. Because in that year, Callas made her professional debut with with the Royal Opera of Athens in a modest role in Franz von Suppé's Boccaccio, and took on her first major role in Tosca later that year. 

But personally for Callas, the year 1954 was her year of transformation. The Greek woman born in 1923 who has struggled with both acne and overweight since her teenage years, lost 30 kilos and turned into a beautiful young woman, a white swan, on the stage, and in her own life.

Since then, she could wear whatever she wanted, but Maria Callas loved black dresses, mostly column shape, almost always below the knee, perhaps she was still conscious of her full figure, perhaps she was ever aware of the divinity only a black dress can give a diva.

But Maria Callas singing in a black dress, can be so breathtakingly beautiful, we can not help think she must truly be a gift from The Greek God.

Maria Callas, La Scala, Milan, 1954