Chanel Jackets

The Chanel jacket is a classic tweed garment that has been a wardrobe staple of chic women around the world since the 1950s.

In Switzerland, Coco Chanel chafed at her post–World War II exile. It was not just that her income from Chanel No. 5 was dwindling. On top of that, as she saw it, Christian Dior’s New Look was making women dress like decorative objects. “I want my women to look like flowers,” Dior famously said of his über-feminine corseted styles, based on 19th-century ideals of beauty. Chanel had fought that fight decades earlier, living a life and espousing a look that more than proved a woman was not a damn flower.

On February 5, 1954, during the showing of her first post-return collection, the Chanel jacket made its debut.

“The Chanel jacket we know today — the tweeds, buttons, braids and chain — really represents modernity,” says Patrick Michael Hughes, associate teaching professor at Parsons School of Design in New York.

Find a range of vintage Chanel women's jackets and other Chanel apparel on 1stDibs.