Inspiring new generations

'Luxury must be comfortable, otherwise it is not luxury'. Coco Chanel’s focus on comfort and freedom of movement in fashion was pioneering and instantly popular. She made simple common fabrics sumptuous and desirable. She was the first to use underwear fabric as fashionable outer wear. Her jersey blouse with its chic wearability, a sailor top from 1916, was radical at the time yet not only looked timeless but also gave a freedom of movement and comfort that ‘liberated the body and discarded waste’. She also pioneered British made tweeds in fresh colour combinations such as ‘hot pinks and poison greens’.

She believed that clothes needed to be comfortable, elegant and enable you to live your life, to party, go horseriding, hunting and fishing, with a freedom of movement and freedom of thinking. Chanel loved borrowing the Duke of Westminster’s jackets for her sports and realised what could be done with this humble fabric, beginning a long working relationship with Linton Tweeds in Carlisle in 1935. She allegedly used to drive to Fontainebleau deep into the forest with a tray, collecting moss, scraping it off the ground covered in dirt, then decorating the moss, with acorns, flowers, dead leaves, bits of straw, then using them as colour combinations for her tweeds.

AW23/24 New Colourways

We've taken these Autumn shades as inspiration for our new AW23/24 collection launching from early November.

Like tweed and jersey, merino wool has a long history as underwear fabric, due to its softness and warmth. And like Coco Chanel's use of jersey and tweed, we think it's time it was elevated and embraced for the beautiful versatile material that it is.

Finally we had to share this fabulous Noir Velocity base layer review from James Elson, the race director at Centurion Running, the ultra distance trail event organiser in the UK.

Enjoy your weekend.

Lisa & Bex

Sources used:
Coco Chanel Unbuttoned on BBC2
Gabrielle Chanel. Fashion Manifesto at V&A South Kensington