Ticker: How Lagerfeld reinvented tweed with Chanel's Little Black Jacket,

The Chanel Little Black Jacket project

Versatility is something inherent to the philosophy of the little black jacket's creator, Coco Chanel. With the design dating back to the early 50s, the boxy shape was strikingly different to the cinched-in waist of the New Look in fashion at the time. Silk-lined, with pockets, and weighted so it hung just so, this was a jacket to do things in. Writing in her biography of Chanel, Justine Picardie describes it as an example of how the designer advocated a "way of dressing that was masculine in its unruffled dignity, while remaining true to its creator's idea of femininity". This jacket showed she actually wasn't very interested in fashion. Instead, as her much-quoted adage "fashion passes, style remains" implies, she wanted to create clothes that could be worn for ever. 

You can imagine, then, that she would be delighted that Lagerfeld has reinvented the jacket again, for a new generation (arguably several, in fact). Taking over at the brand in 1982 (11 years after Coco died), he revitalised a dusty fashion house into something relevant again, with the archive at the centre. Coco staples such as pearls, quilting, monochrome and, of course, the jacket are grist to his mill. Chanel was associated with ladies who lunch when Lagerfeld took charge, and he deformalised it by taking apart the skirt suit, playing with the shape and constantly tweaking it over 40 years. A young Claudia Schiffer wore it on the runway in the 90s with a leather miniskirt, while the 80s saw the addition of power shoulders. Recent interpretations include grungy fraying and cropped shapes on the spring/summer runway.