Fashion
If The Jacket Fits:
CHANEL’S ENDURING CLASSIC
Searches for archival Chanel have never been higher. Ahead of Matthieu Blazy’s long-awaited arrival, we explore the perennial allure of the house’s definitive classic.
03.15.25
BY RACHEL HODIN
BY RACHEL HODIN
There’s a specific synergy that separates a classic Chanel jacket from all others. A harmonious union between the rigorous and the agile; between that which is striking and virtually undetectable; between a steely, unshakable resolve and an airy, aqueous ease. At first blush, it’s a balance that might seem impossible, but whose paradoxical essence is precisely what gives it its preternatural beauty.
Sound a bit excessive or inflated? Perhaps, but it’s also an unequivocal, unanimous truth. Anyone who’s tried on a Chanel jacket can attest: to slip one on is to feel a sweeping, all-encompassing strength and a phosphorescent levity all at once.
Rhonda Garelick, a New York Times writer and author of Madameoiselle: Coco Chanel and the Pulse of History compared the feeling of wearing a Chanel jacket to so unlike anything else, it practically “defies expectation.” But if she had to describe it? “A silken hug. Your arms glide smoothly into the perfect armholes (one of Coco’s obsessions); you stand tall, back and shoulders light. It feels like love.” Fashion critic Cathy Horyn who, back in 2000, set about procuring her own custom-fitted Chanel suit, can vouch. “Of course, when the finished suit arrived in New York,” she wrote, “it was perfect, and I marveled that something that had taken so many hours to make, and was obviously exceptional, could feel like nothing when it’s on.”
The fact that this sentiment has remained relatively unchanged over the years, whether one is referring to an original Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel design or the creations of her most noteworthy successor, Karl Lagerfeld, is just proof of its enduring appeal.
outside the chanel shows, images care of sandra semburg
Part of what made Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel’s style such a hit was her insistence on practicality. To create her now-classic tweed jacket, which she introduced in 1957, she looked to the utilitarian nature of both men’s clothing and working class uniforms for design inspiration—a move that, in hindsight, seems completely reasonable, but which was revolutionary back then. In many respects, the design was a direct reaction to real-life needs and sartorial shortfalls in women’s fashion.
Among the jacket’s instantly identifiable characteristics are its collarless, cardigan style silhouette, a design she devised in response to the loose-fitting sweaters she borrowed from her first great love, the Englishman Boy Capel—sweaters she sliced down the middle to avoid mussing up her hair when pulling them on. The jacket’s signature nubby tweed can be traced back to her Scottish hunting trips with her next great love, the Duke of Westminster—whose world, and in particular the butlers and footmen who populated it, would introduce her to a wealth of other oft-overlooked details, textures, materials, and moods. The jacket’s functional buttons and roomy pockets were lifted from menswear, and the brass material she sometimes used for her buttons inspired by the brass trappings on the Duke of Westminster’s yacht. But perhaps the most literal reference point for the jacket’s overall fit and style was a certain lift boy’s uniform that she clocked at Salzburg’s Mittersill hotel.
On the set for the shoot that would become The Little Black Jacket, the 2012 global exhibition dedicated solely to Chanel’s classic tweed jacket, Karl Lagerfeld said, “The Chanel jacket is a man’s jacket which has become a typically feminine piece. It has crossed that boundary. I love that.” It’s a style that truly “suits everyone,” said fashion editor and stylist Carine Roitfeld. Asked about the jacket, Virginie Viard—Karl’s former design director, who would go on to succeed him—said, “Some timeless pieces are more like vintage. Fine, we always find vintage pieces beautiful, but this is not the same thing. It is outside fashion.”
What Viard seems to be alluding to is the ineffable essence of this piece that truly brings it to life. If the jacket’s practicality reflects the side of Coco that was resolute and realistic—her fiery determination that would fuel both her unceasing work ethic and unwavering resolve for independence—then its dreamier, ethereal spirit reflects the romantic side to Coco that softened her hard edges.
This is the Coco who admitted to learning everything she needed to know about life “through novels.” Who once said, “All novels are reality in the guise of dreams.” It’s this side of her that seemed to have an intuitive understanding for the innate sensuality not in the obvious, but in the less obvious: not in tight-fitting garments and over-emphasized curves, but in loose and languid fits that merely hint at the figure beneath. Who understood the seductive to be found not in the conspicuous but in inconspicuous, hidden luxuries. Hence such discreet treasures as the sumptuous, printed silk she used as lining and the gilt chains she sewed onto the inner hemlines to keep the jacket properly weighted. This is the side of Coco who had an innate grasp for the power of suggestion, and whose very style was driven by her belief that “trying to cover up something only accentuates it.”
Tilda Swinton captures this delicate dichotomy best when she told Vogue of her Chanel couture look at this year’s Golden Globes: “This jacket delighted me on sight, but completely enchanted me when I put it on…[It conjured] a child’s fantasy of Venice—princely and eternal, gossamer, and tough at the same time.”
“The Chanel jacket is a man’s jacket which has become a typically feminine piece. It has crossed that boundary. I love that. It’s a style that truly suits everyone." Fashion editor and stylist, Carine Roitfeld.
LEFT IMAGE: CHRISTY TURLINGTON, Chanel Spring 1993 IMAGE/VOGUE, MIDDLE IMAGE: CLAUDIA SCHIFFER CHANEL FALL 1994, IMAGE/CONDE NAST ARCHIVE, KATE MOSS CHANEL COUTURE 1995 IMAGE/CONDE NAST ARCHIVE
If Coco Chanel created the gold standard of practical elegance, one that’s highly functional, versatile, and bristles with an almost-unreal ease, then Karl Lagerfeld catapulted Chanel—and all that it stood for—into a world of pure fantasy.
Karl had an uncanny ability to retain information and soak up the world around him, while always maintaining a safe remove from the past and present. He never married or had kids, didn’t go on social media, and never drank or smoked. In this way, he made himself into a living legend, an almost mythical figure, and a pure wellspring of knowledge and creativity.
For each collection, he concocted the stuff of fairytales, homing in on a central idea and bringing that to life the only way he knew how: by filtering it through his encyclopedic brain, mingling it with a mélange of references—current and historical, obscure and sometimes almost comically commercial—and always with the full support of his illustrious ateliers.
“In a way,” said director of the Museum at FIT Valerie Steele, “he was a kind of doctor who brought in shock treatment to the house of Chanel to make it all really lively again.” He would indulge his most irreverent and insouciant, heady and tantalizing whims to create larger-than-life sets that became reprieves for the fashion cognoscenti and, according to his closest confidante Lady Amanda Harlech, “a trigger for the design of a collection.” Harlech goes on, “These shows galvanized the whole studio in a collaged cultural clash between history and the future, with lexicons of references woven into fabrics and accessories.”
“The results were always familiar, yet at the same time entirely unfamiliar. When guests entered the Grand Palais for his Autumn / Winter ’20 show, for instance, what may have initially looked like an average supermarché was in fact not that at all—fully stocked, yes, but with Chanel-branded grocery store items. Or take his Spring / Summer ’15 show: a marvelously strange feeling, surely, to walk inside the Grand Palais from the outdoors, only to realize you were outside once again, thanks to a set complete with paved roads (boasting puddles and potholes) and walls made to look like the faces of seven-story Parisian buildings.
“Through this clever play of the familiar and unfamiliar, Karl cultivated an uncanny mood of unadulterated delight that fueled his designs and approach to craftsmanship—consider the “fantasy tweed” fabric Lesage, Chanel’s embroidery atelier, started creating for the house in the ‘90s, which has the appearance of tweed but is in actuality a light-as-air, never-before-made material woven not from threads but from loose ribbons—and which charged his pieces with a cool magnetism and urgent desirability.
“For his Pre-Fall 2017 Métiers d’Art show, a variety of show he introduced in 2002 with the express purpose of highlighting the exquisite craftsmanship of the house’s ateliers, Karl delivered his own idyllic vision of Parisian glamour. Aptly held at the Ritz Paris—where Coco Chanel famously took up residence from 1937 until her death in 1971—the collection was not rooted in one particular era but rather nodded to a multitude of periods and Chanel-isms, with elements ranging from the streetwise to the regal. From a tweed puffer and Lurex, Louis XIV-style breeches to pairings of Edwardian lace with crisp black leather, magnificent beadwork alongside sequined pedal pushers, it was a divine meld of romantic decadence, punk details, and cheeky notes of antiquity. The perfect display of Coco’s innate femininity and Karl’s rocker-like sensibility, exemplified by the shredded, tautly fit jacket (see: below) ornately woven in that “fantasy tweed” in shades of steely blue, pale gunmetal, and black.
For Spring / Summer ’19, against the backdrop of a serene beach (manmade inside the Grand Palais and so not an actual beach at all), Karl imbued the Chanel tenants with a carefree, unpolished insouciance. With the shore washing up on one side and the audience on the other, girls sauntered out barefoot—many holding their Perspex-heeled sandals in hand—wearing casually oversized tweed sets, jackets, and cropped trousers. But it was the contrast of subversive styling, the layers of sautoirs and blocks of sleek, tailored black that captured Karl’s distinct edge and endless appeal. Particularly of note? The clean-cut, collarless blazer (also below) that balances figure-sculpting, scuba-like, sharp-shouldered tailoring with a soft crepe fabrication for a flawless, sinuous fit.
There are very few fashion houses that have remained as steadily in demand as Chanel. Its most recognizable designs—the tweed jacket chief among them—have united women across party lines, international and state borders, cultures, and religions for over a century. Vintage Chanel has always been popular—indeed, it’s a brand that’s come to epitomize the meaning of “forever appeal.” But it’s perhaps never been as coveted and sought-after as it is now, when Karl Lagerfeld’s electric collections are still very much top of mind and the recent appointment of Matthieu Blazy as creative director has only inspired renewed energy around the house.
Blazy formerly held posts at Maison Marigela, where he led the artisanal couture line, at Céline, where he worked as a senior designer under Phoebe Philo, and at Calvin Klein, where he was the design director under Raf Simons. But it was his most recent stint at Bottega Veneta where he was given the freedom to show off his remarkable chops. There, he demonstrated his outstanding artisanal skills and unmatched eye for innovation. There, he proved his immense virtuosity, earning his place among the greats, and stirring up a visceral excitement for what’s to come.
