The very smartest, most exquisitely dressed girl Alice had ever seen.... She was wearing the kind of frock technically known as 'little,' a name which bears no relation to its price, and had the most elegant legs, the thinnest stockings, and the highest heels imaginable.
This amazing fictional creature turned out to be a young woman named Phoebe who is nice as pie to poor, shy Alice, and whose confident bearing and polished appearance are part of a performance based on her work on the stage as an actress which she has taken on as a career in order to escape from her mother’s persistent and annoying plans to make her a rich marriage.
I was struck by the explanation of “little” which is not attached to the word black as we have do with the “little black dress,” but to any fashionable, very expensive dress. Why “little” then? It isn’t clear, but a tall slender silhouette, although one with a definite bust, waist, and hips was popular in 1938 when when Pomfret Towers was published. Also, simplicity, despite what to our eyes are complex garment details, was highly valued in garment design. So, these may be the reasons that “little” became the fashionable word for a fashionable dress
Pomfret Towers is by Angela Thirkell, one of her novels set in the fictional county of Barsetshire, a county name she had borrowed from Trollope. This one is about a weekend spent at the home of the richest and rudest man in the county (the wealth enabling the manners) and the question who will the man’s heir marry? Plus, some serious teasing about certain kinds of novelists and their desire for admiration. Virago Books has republished many of these novels and you can find them here: https://www.virago.co.uk/contributor/angela-thirkell/