Coco Chanel’s little black dress will feature in an exhibition highlighting the racial identity of “blackness”.

The new show curated by the National Museum of Scotland will seek to examine the “radical power” of the fashion staple, and its varied use from respectful funeral attire to a favourite of “fetish subcultures”.

A dress designed by Chanel in 1926 will take centre stage in the exhibition, which will aim to examine “blackness in terms of identity” and the meaning of the colour itself.

The National Museum of Scotland has borrowed its centrepiece dress from the Kunstgewerbemuseum (Museum of Decorative Arts) in Berlin, and curators have said that the piece will open the exhibition “with the idea that this is kind of the birth of the little black dress”.

From this moment in the 1920s, displays will chart the history of the ubiquitous garment, explaining its cultural significance, and how the colour black is perceived.