Elegance of Chanel jacket never fades

By Bernadette Morra
The Star.com

Introduced in 1954, Coco Chanel's iconic jacket is constantly reinvented but never

All it took was one jacket and Dee Dee Taylor Hannah was hooked.

"A few years ago, a client gave me a black bolero," recalls the Toronto architect, who runs her own firm and co-owns construction and project management companies.

The jacket was two sizes too big, but Hannah had it cut down to fit her well-toned size 38 frame.

The piece added French polish to Hannah's hip L.A. style, which is heavy on Vince T-shirts, snappy Tevrow + Chase separates, sexy boots and a wardrobe of jeans.

But so versatile is a Chanel jacket that the same item can be worn more conservatively with a matching skirt and pumps, if need be.

And in terms of construction, nothing else comes close.

"There are a million other jackets out there," Hannah says. "But there is weight and depth and substance to a Chanel jacket. "They are so beautiful and comfortable and flattering. Once you have one, it's hard not to buy another."

Hannah has built a wardrobe of Chanel that includes a quilted leather cardigan jacket, a red tweed motorcycle style, a peplumed wool jersey jacket that reaches to mid-thigh, and the cream boucle cardigan she wore to a cocktail party at Chanel's Bloor St. boutique last week (shown on the cover).

"I try to buy one or two a year," Hannah explains. "And I shop the sales. But even on sale they are a fortune."

Starting price point for a basic Chanel jacket is $4,500. Flourishes like sequins and embroidery can push the expenditure close to what one might pay for a compact car.

A black jacket with silver tiaras encircling each sleeve – the tiaras embroidered by the famous couture house of Lesage, which Chanel now owns – went for $15,000.

"We sold 35," says Mary-Adair Macaire.

Macaire is Chanel's director of global marketing for ready-to-wear and accessories and was in town from Paris along with an exhibition titled Secrets of the Chanel Jacket.

The pieces from the "conservatoire," Chanel's private museum, dated to 1954 when Gabrielle "Coco" Chanel staged her comeback after closing her Paris-based house during World War II.

The fashion of the time was Christian Dior's New Look, with voluminous skirts in up to 20 metres of fabric. Chanel shocked the fashion press with her relaxed suits and a narrow silhouette.

"Chanel hated the New Look," Macaire says. "Her collection was all about comfort, and this jacket was key."

The jacket was modelled on a cardigan with soft shoulders and a boxy cut. "It's a shape we still find relevant," Macaire says. The spring 2008 collection includes cardigan styles in pink leather and red, white and blue checks.

Karl Lagerfeld, designer of the house since 1983, riffs endlessly on the cardigan and other Chanel classics: the spencer jacket, the military jacket, and yachtsman's blazers.

"Chanel was very fond of men and their closets," Macaire says, hinting at the designer's passionate affairs. "She pulled the jacket out of a man's closet and tweaked it."

Chanel's focus on the jacket dates to 1914, a period when women were still corseted and immobilized by stiff fabrics. She allowed women to move – what a concept! – with designs of pliable wool jersey.

"At the time, that was the only fabric she could find and afford," Macaire says.

As usual, Chanel caused a stir.

"Wool jersey was men's underwear fabric, so imagine what women thought when they came to see her collection and found it made from the fabric in their husbands' underwear drawers."

Her renegade spirit led to many Chanel classics: the little black dress, the quilted shoulder bag, Chanel No. 5, the spectator pump.

But her attention to the jacket never waned and she analyzed and re-analyzed its construction to ensure it always delivered comfort and elegance.

Chanel added a chain to the hem so the jacket would fall straight. "She used to say, every woman wants to be wrapped in chains," Macaire quips. And armholes were cut high "because she thought it was very inelegant when a woman raised her arm and the whole jacket went with her."

With her return to fashion, Chanel embraced her favourite fabric, tweed, another house icon that Lagerfeld has pushed to the edge. Chanel tweeds are hand-loomed at Lesage in complex weaves of silk ribbon, satin cord and threads bearing minute embroideries or tiny passementerie.

"I pulled one tweed apart that had a strand of mother-of-pearl hearts in it – definitely not your average tweed," Macaire says.

Yet for all the preciousness, Chanel wanted women to move, to live, to love in her clothes.

"You can sleep in a Chanel tweed jacket and it will look better than you in the morning," Macaire promises.

No doubt, at some point in her remarkable life, Coco put that maxim to the test.

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