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The Jewish Chronicle

Coco's jacket grabs the world by its lapels

The boxy jacket from 1955 is enjoying yet another fashion moment.

March 18, 2010 12:33
Orange-white tweed jacket, £28, Matalan

ByJan Shure, Jan Shure

2 min read

It is hard to believe that the boxy, edge-to-edge jacket in knobbly wool bouclé, originally created by Coco Chanel in 1955, is enjoying yet another fashion moment.

It became a wardrobe classic for a decade after its creation, then lost its style supremacy for two decades when mini-skirts, flower-power, Biba and Mary Quant made anything as formal as a tailored jacket horribly passé.

It stepped back into the spotlight in the early 1980s when Karl Lagerfeld was appointed Chanel's creative director. In a stroke of pure genius, Lagerfeld recreated, up-dated and gave a new twist to many of Coco Chanel's iconic pieces, making them must-haves for a totally new generation of women.

Arguably his most successful resurrection was the definitively chic Chanel jacket. Shorter, a little more fitted, more boldly trimmed than the 1955 original, and more likely to be seen accompanying a pair of jeans than a matching tweed skirt, Lagerfeld's version of the Chanel jacket entered the fashion lexicon of the hip 20-somethings. It hogged the limelight till the noughties and then suffered a minor eclipse until reinvented in an edgy version by Luella in her winter 09 collection. Ironically (she ceased trading last November), Luella seems to have propelled it back into the mainstream. This season there are versions by Donna Karan, Dolce & Gabbana, Derek Lam, Moschino and even Marc Jacobs, whose covetable ivory tweed jacket, with day-glo ribbons and a military shoulder line, definitely alludes to Karl's recreation if not Coco's original. It is also all across the high street, from New Look and Topshop to Bonmarché and Bhs.