A Chanel jacket is often recognised before the eye has registered much else: the neat, graphic outline; the textured cloth; the trim defining its edges. Yet its staying power has less to do with instant recognition than with a quality that still feels remarkably current – clothes that look poised while allowing their wearer to move freely. Gabrielle Chanel began developing that idea in the 1920s, when she decided to work with tweed, then a fabric associated almost exclusively with menswear....