Eternal beauty - The Chanel Suit

Eternal beauty - The Chanel Suit

The Chanel suit is ageless. A uniform of style, it is absolutely unique, resolutely modern, easy to wear and easy to personalize and recycle. The suit is associated with the woman who created and wore it for the first time in 1913, turning it into what she herself called the” fashion statement of the century”. After almost ninety years of existence, the Chanel suit continues to be a timeless standard, eternally young. It is a phenomenon unaffected by the passing of time. Its story is the tale of a woman, a house, a style, a look which – updated, reinvented and subverted by Karl Lagerfeld, who has been with the house since 1983 – is now marching triumphant into the third millennium.


Few creations have had a greater influence on fashion than the Chanel suit. A classic symbol of French elegance, the suit is constructed according to a precise code: strict lines, a fitted cut articulated at exactly the right places to allow ease of movement, braid trimming on jacket, sleeves fitted precisely at shoulder level, real pockets, an enduring range of colours – beige, navy blue, black, as well as pink, cherry red or pale green, a consistent choice of fabrics – jersey and tweeds or daring combinations, ‘fabrics so dazzling as to strike the heartiest Highlander blind”. The jackets and skirts are always cut from the same piece of fabric to avoid colour variations. The skirts are mounted on grosgrain at hip level, not on a waist-level belt, which would have resulted in unnecessary thinkness. Braids and trimmings underline the contours of the jackets, redefine it, edge the pockets and cuffs, always with impeccable stle. For Coco Chanel, luxary lay in invisible perfection.