- Gabrielle Bonheur "Coco" Chanel, was a French fashion designer and businesswoman.

The founder and namesake of the Chanel brand.

she was credited in the post World War I era with liberating women from the constraints of the corseted silhouette and popularizing a sporty casual chic as the feminine standard of style.

Among her many quotes, "I don't care what you think about me.

I don't think about you at all."

The Chanel jacket is our focus.

We'll go inside and discover the secrets all today on "Fit 2 Stitch."

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(slow upbeat music) - Chanel jackets have transcended time more powerfully than any other garment in our history.

It is amazing that sometimes after a designer passes away, a designs or her designs or her legacy kind of fade off a little bit.

Definitely not the case with Coco Chanel.

Coco Chanel first created that jacket in 1954.

Her reasoning was that that corset and everything that women wore at that time were very constricting, very tight and she just didn't like it.

And she wanted the freedom and she wanted the liberation but she wanted a jacket.

Keep in mind, 1954, women weren't even wearing jackets.

That was really a time where the jacket was reserved for the man and women were wearing much more frilly and fluffier things.

So 1954, she brought out that first jacket.

It was a tweed.

It was done beautifully.

It was beautifully made.

And all those years it kept going.

It was worn by very famous women.

And some you'll clearly remember, even though maybe you didn't know a few things but first off Jackie Kennedy, when her husband, the day her husband was assassinated and the pink jacket and suit she had on, that was a Chanel.

And in fact, that was a brand new style for Chanel.

They had released it for that tour and for that event and after that event and the tragedy that happened on that day, they actually never reproduced that style again in respect to what had taken place.

Princess Diana had also worn the jacket until she divorced, going through her divorce with Prince Charles, her reasoning being, after the divorce and she came and they brought her all these jackets and shoes and things for her to select from, the logo, the CC, the double CC logo on those clothes, just she could not bring herself to wear those because in her mind it reminded her of Charles and Camilla.

So clothes definitely have meaning for us.

They simply have emotions attached to them.

We've known women who will only wear Chanel and women who will just not touch it and for various reasons and either way it's okay.

What we wanna do here today is we wanna learn what goes into it.

Coco Chanel died and after she died, Karl Lagerfeld took over.

Now, Karl had worked for the company for many, many years and he ran this company and really expanded it from their typical tweed jackets, what they originally had been known for.

He really blossomed and bloomed and we're gonna see some different jackets that evolved during that timeframe.

Karl Lagerfeld died in 2019.

Virginie Viard is the creative director of Chanel today.

And she's done an amazing job in the short period of time because she's worked there for so long.

She knew the spirits.

She knows the energy of everything that goes on there and she continues that legacy and no doubt, it will continue on.

It is interesting to note for me, as I researched it and looked, what is most important about a Chanel jacket?

What women who love Chanel look for.

And I spoke with an employee of Chanel.

Actually for 20, who's been an employee for 29 years who wanted to be on the show and couldn't be on the show simply because Chanel is such a protected brand.

Chanel doesn't want anything released talking about them that they endorse, unless they have complete full control and full production of it.

So a lot of information was really fun for me to gather and it was so interesting to see behind the scenes but you'll have to hear it secondhand rather than firsthand.

And so I promise I kept all the details just accurately.

But mostly know that the quality control is the most important thing.

One of the issues that we talked about was when Chanel bought and distributed watches.

They didn't just contract that out, they bought the entire watch manufacturing process so that they could control how many were made, where they were distributed, the marks, the logos, everything about it.

It's a very controlled brand.

And like I said, when you go to see resale of this, the buttons and all of those things that take place, the prices just stay crazy high.

Many resell shops I went to, and I went all over the country.

There's a separate rack for Chanel.

It's like this hallowed, you know, garment that still continues.

And that's just to be much respected in this fashion industry where designers come and go very quickly.

So we're gonna take a look at some Chanels.

I've got three jackets back here and I wanna point them out because they are definitely in order of history that they came about.

The first one, what I want you to notice is it has the logo buttons, not really, you know, big or small but I want you to notice how everything matches.

And of course, with the tweeds, this is something that Chanel was very famous for.

How carefully placed everything was.

You notice the pockets, those pockets are called a bluff pocket.

And we'll look at that a little bit later.

Bluff because they don't look like they're sewn on but they actually are, but you don't see any stitching around the exterior of the pocket.

But I love how beautifully it's done.

Wool.

Of course, all wool with silk linings.

Wool again with silk lining.

No CC buttons simply because there was a time when that logo wasn't as strong and as prominent as what it is today.

And if you look through the history of Chanel, many times, for instance, in this jacket, there was just a mere logo on the end of a sleeve.

Other than that, nothing strong to indicate on the exterior of the jacket that it was Chanel.

And what we know about Chanel today is it's exterior and large logos everywhere because the population has gotten to where if they have a Chanel jacket and if they've paid the price, they want everyone to know.

And so that's been positive and negative.

There is still couture Chanel, which is handmade that does not have logos on it because that level generally wants it to just be great and not necessarily be known on the inside of this jacket though, we do see the typical Chanel lining.

Sometimes it was done in a logo.

Sometimes it was actually done in this case, was Chanel written all over it.

But keep in mind, all of those details are still very important to the Chanel wearer for those who wear the jacket.

So this is the one we're gonna take a deep dive into.

We'll take into a couple and what I've done and just kind of to prep so that it wouldn't take more time than what we needed it to is I went ahead and opened up the bottom but I definitely wanna show you some features of this jacket that are just really fun to know.

And some, to me, to be honest, were a little surprising.

I thought maybe I'd see something different than when I did.

I've opened a jacket before that's a Chanel, but every jacket's a little bit different.

Believe it or not, they're not really just all the same all the way across the board.

So if you know, or not, if you reach inside a sleeve, and it's usually the left sleeve.

Oh, that's the right sleeve.

It's usually the left sleeve and I'll turn it inside so that you can see.

This is how they close up a jacket.

And so if you look on the left sleeve, what you'll see is the seaming is done with, just like a little pinch, the fabrics are stitched together, they top stitch it because they can work from the inside of the jacket.

They can turn the whole thing out.

And then all sudden just seal it up there.

So it's the left sleeve that, if you always go into, you can see where they closed up the jacket.

That's most of the time.

Today, what I did is I've opened up the bottom so that we don't have to go through the sleeve.

And it's just a little bit easier.

I only opened up half.

So you could really authentically see what's going on here.

But again, this was just fun.

And you know, maybe you have to be a little weird to think it's fun, but it was just really fun for me.

So I'm gonna take out these pins so that we can see a few traditional parts of a Chanel jacket.

First off are the chain.

The chain originally was a 24 karat gold.

It is no longer a 24 karat gold.

In fact, usually what it does is it matches the buttons.

So whatever the coloring of the buttons is generally what they'll color the chain or use those colors of chain.

I used a caliper because what I wanted you to see, the chain was originally put for the jacket to have weight.

That's actually changed over the years.

They still put the chain in simply because it's traditional but it's role has changed because you think back from when these first jackets were released to now, fabrics have just come so far.

They don't need the chain, they don't need the drape.

They are just, the manufacturing of those fabrics are so much better but the chain for those who wear Chanel are just, you know, necessary part.

So I went ahead and used a little caliper and I put it on the chain and I weighed the chain.

So keep in mind that this is going to measure three millimeters.

And then what I did is I got a chain.

I went to a jewelry store, which is the best place.

Like I first went to Home Depot that didn't work.

But I went to a jewelry store and this actually measures 3.5.

But keep in mind that I had to go a little bigger to get the weight to balance out.

So their smaller chain weighs the same as my larger chain.

It's not that much larger and certainly it would give you the look of Chanel but you can buy it in different colors and different varieties if you decide you want that.

Again the chain is not critical, but it's kind of cool when you flash your jacket open and you've got that little chain back there.

The chain is stitched on every third link.

It's hand stitched in all cases.

And it's every third link.

So if you wanna make sure that you duplicate it, that's all that you need to know.

I do wanna show you something that was fascinating.

That was different on this jacket that I had not seen on other Chanels.

Right inside here, and I honestly had looked at the jacket over and over and over and I didn't even see it until I insided it out.

So once you come inside, if you notice on the inside, there is no fusible, which I found to be fascinating.

The only section that's fused is the hem.

And when the hem comes up, it's a one and three quarter inch wide hem.

It comes up and covers itself.

But notice that's the only section that's fused but the front of the jacket is fused.

So the entire front sections, my guess is to support the pockets and the back is not.

So if we go and look at it a little carefully here, and you know, I borrowed this jacket and I told somebody I would bring it back to them.

And I told them, they'd never know it was taken apart.

So, you know, I had to carefully be sure I did this right but I wanted you to look inside here because the lining is sewn down to an inch distance of the hem.

But when you turn it to the inside, there's the weight.

It's actually not in the chain.

So the chain is just something that history has put in all these Chanel jackets but it really doesn't do anything.

And I noticed that the weight is not on both sides.

It's only on the side that is, where the button holes are because that's the one that's on the outside.

And that's the one that actually needs the greater weighting.

So this is just so much fun to look inside.

Nothing spectacular inside at all.

Your shoulder pad and your header still done identical to how we do them today.

There's a sleeve head.

There's a bias strip there done exactly how they're done today.

The shoulder pad, this is a little older jacket.

So the shoulder pad is not a straight edge.

It's a curved edge.

just to keep, make sure you know where I'm going.

It's out here.

That would really look outdated today.

Well, I shouldn't say outdated.

It just a little different look than what's current today.

It's got a straight shoulder pad rather than one that's capped like that.

This is more, this would be more reserved too for like a raglan sleeve, as opposed to a set in sleeve.

So that's just a fun little information to know.

So we're gonna put this one aside and we're gonna go over and just grab another one real quickly.

I wanna put this a little blue one because this was really from a time when Chanel, you know, the tweed wasn't important.

The buttons weren't important.

None of that was really important but I do want you to notice this jacket was closed up completely differently.

There is no seaming on the inside, but I want you to notice, and I took apart a little section of the bottom.

This is a felted wool.

It's a beautiful piece of fabric but everything is left raw because you can with felted wool.

And then it's simply put together and stitched together.

And that stitch is what closes up the whole entire jacket.

But boy, the cutting and the precision is everything.

So if you notice just here at the hem, there is no hem.

It's actually stitched in place and that's the finish.

But keep in mind, this jacket is older.

We think, well we weren't exactly sure, but we think this was really from the late 1950s or early 1960s, was one that came into play.

All right, so let's quickly talk about fabric for a minute.

Our fabric is very loosely woven.

Very loosely woven.

that's kind of the hallmark of Chanel.

So for us home sewers, if we look to get Chanel fabric, we should be careful because a lot of times they'll say Chanel fabric and you know, you just, you have to trust your sources.

I think that's the most important thing.

The only place Chanel never sells their fabrics.

They never sell off their fabrics.

They'll burn them before they sell them.

You can't say to anybody I've told you that but that's the truth.

So they just want that quality control.

And it's important for them to understand where that fabric is going.

So what they'll do though, is if you know the mills in France or you know, where the fabric is sold, the ones who sell Chanel will say to you, we sold this fabric to Chanel.

And so typically it will have the mill on it and it will be the original card and they'll say, "Chanel bought this fabric.

We can't tell you what they made with it but we can sell it to you.

So that's how I got this particular piece of fabric, was from my fabric guys in New York.

And they gave it to me and they said they knew it was Chanel.

And they knew Chanel had purchased the fabric.

And so I was excited because I wanted something as authentic as I could possibly get.

What I did though, again, as a home sewer, is I fused my whole entire jacket.

And my reasoning for that was simply it would give it a little longer life.

So that fusible process is very easy.

We've spoken about it before.

You don't wanna use a woven fusible, woven will stiffen a woven, but a knit.

A knit fusible to a woven fabric, gives it to where you can look it and you can't even tell it's in there.

But the reason it's in there is for help and support and it's gonna stabilize everything inside.

So my suggestion would be to fuse the whole entire jacket.

My whole entire jacket is done that way.

It won't bag at the elbows and it won't do things like that that you don't necessarily want to happen.

Let's talk about that bluff pocket.

Kind of fun to do and it's really surprisingly simple to do.

Just takes you a little extra work and it takes, I would suggest you changing the thread.

So again, what Chanel is known for is how beautifully they align plaids and tweeds and all those things that go together so that it just looks seamless across the jacket.

So first what I did is I cut the pocket and for you, they are lined, but you want to make sure that the lining comes underneath the seam allowance.

You don't wanna get rid of the seam allowance.

You've got to be able to get into the curve of where you want that to be.

So for this example, I just left it unlined.

Then you're gonna come along and you're actually gonna top stitch the pocket in place.

And so I changed thread colors so that you could see exactly what was going on, 'cause if you don't, you just won't be able to see what's happening here.

So there's a real fine.

And you know, we talked many times about what edge stitching is.

You want that stitching to be what we call edge stitched on.

It's really gotta be close.

So right around the corners, all I wanna do is come to a real close edge stitch.

And the reason why is because you're gonna come back the next thing and you're going to come inside and you're literally going to stitch right on that section, right on that portion.

You're gonna come inside the pocket and you can actually easily manipulate that.

Remember all of their fabrics are kind of this loosely woven stuff so you can get into it really without any problem.

And you'll just come around and you'll completely go inside and follow along the edge of the stitching.

Then what you're gonna do, is you'll actually remove the top stitch and because the depth of the fabric and the kind of error factor that you have when you're using a fiber like this, that's thicker.

It just won't be a problem.

And then you can, what I did is I just repressed this.

And so your pocket just has a little bit of buoyancy and it has a little bit of ability for you to get your hand in where this one's gonna be a little bit tighter before you remove it, but it works beautifully.

Try it it's really fun.

My only suggestion would be not to use a fabric that's really, really tightly woven.

A linen would be much more complex to make it do exactly right than something that's got this more dense tweed in it.

So anytime you have a tweed, let's leave the world of pockets and go into making the fringe.

That's fun to do.

We all love to do it.

The only thing I warn is that you have to really schedule cleaning time for your work room after you do this because there's like stuff everywhere.

It's just kind of a mess.

So what I did and I did it for contrast reasons.

I wanted you to see that you can put fringe on a couple of different ways.

You can include it in the seam if you want.

But remember, and I did that here.

I actually cut a facing.

So there's a separate piece to go inside and I inserted it inside.

Don't fringe it before you insert it, just a warning because otherwise it's hard to even know what's going where.

So just leave it as a piece of fabric.

In this particular case, I just sewed it on top all the way around.

You don't need to worry about that because you're gonna remove those and it's going to become fringe.

So do it on the outside.

If you wanted to do double layers.

And I've looked at Chanel jackets that had two layers they had like, if it was a lapel.

Again this is inserted in the hem or in the seam.

I could lay it on top and I could lay it underneath.

And you can't really tell which way it is.

And the particular jackets that I looked at in every case, they had it on the top and they had it on the back.

So the amount of fringe you can decide what you wanna do.

The other thing you want to think about is I would only do it once.

You can always add fringe and you can always determine the length you want it to be.

So when I was trying to figure out how much fringe I wanted at my wrist line, I decided I could always make it longer and if I want to shorter I could cut it back and I would follow that advice also.

But you'll notice with this particular fabric and probably many of them that the weft and the warp are different yarns.

So depending on how my fringe is, as I pull this away, I'll get a completely different look going in one direction than I do in another.

So if you notice that the front of my jacket I've got a much thicker yarn whereas the sleeve that goes this way because this is the warp, it's a much thinner yarn.

So I would take a section of your fabric and just kind of play with it and see if you like.

I decided to use both and use them both in different ways.

And you get to do that also, it's your jacket.

So some of the things that Coco Chanel did with her jacket that were great for the time aren't necessarily great.

The styling is a very straight line.

It's got two pockets at the bust, two pockets at the hip, not necessarily positive.

So I think it's fun as a sewer to take those ideas and then just make them yours and decide how you want your jacket to be.

But I do wanna show you how to close up the sleeves.

And the lining is all inside.

It's sewn up around the facing.

The bottom is done at this point.

And I wanna do the sleeve hem.

The reason being is because the sleeves hem will finish off the jacket and it will actually hem the sleeve.

So you don't have to go in and hem the sleeve.

So you're going to push your lining down, which I did in this case, I pushed my lining all the way down to the bottom, make sure it's not twisted.

And then you'll grab the jacket from the bottom.

So what you wanna do is the series of what you do this in is you'll do the lining around here.

You'll sew the bottom.

You'll go in through the slit in the sleeve, which I showed you earlier.

You'll so the bottom closed and then you'll sew up the slit.

So this would be step two in the lining.

What you're gonna do is just pull this out.

And I had a customer one time say to me it looks like two elephants kissing and it kind of does, your wrong sides are together.

And what you're going to do is take out the wrong sides together.

And I pinned that so that it wouldn't twist.

If that lining twists, you're never going to get your sleeve, your arm down the sleeve.

Turn it around, line up those, and let's go to the sewing machine and let's get this sewn.

Okay, so all I need to do here is I'm always gonna suggest to you to sew with you're lining up.

A sewing machine has a tendency to eat the lining.

And again, I'm using contrasting fabric here.

So you can really see that, the difference between the thread color and the jacket itself.

So I'm just simply gonna pull the fabric out.

As I'm doing it, I'm just gonna sew in a circle and just keep going all the way around.

And sometimes when you're sewing this, it may not make the most sense, but you'll see that when I finish it, it pulls out and I'm just going to go all the way around All right, and I'm not even gonna go all the way around 'cause you'll get it.

And I want to pull it out so you can see the difference.

All right, so here I've done it.

So you can see there, it would go all the way around there and then let's pull it back out.

And I want to just show you that inside.

So you can see that because the lining is cut shorter than the jacket, it just simply hems the sleeve.

So your pattern, it'll all be built into your pattern.

And it's just fun.

This series, fashion designers and their contributions to the fashion industry has been more fun than I ever imagined.

Of all the information I gathered for this series, I'll use about 10%.

I'm so grateful for what I learned as I do these series.

Fashion designers fascinate me.

I admire their vision, their inspiration, their courage to repeatedly follow their dreams with little encouragement from those around them.

My goal for this series has been able to help you understand and appreciate the designer's influence on the clothes we wear.

Now, when you wear that convertible collar or that new wrap dress, you will appreciate those who created that look for you to enjoy.

A lot of people make the show possible.

I want to thank our production crew in our studio here in Dallas and on location in New York city and my family.

I especially want to thank you, our viewers for your support.

Thanks for watching Fit 2 Stitch.

Happy sewing.

(slow upbeat music) - [Announcer] Fit 2 Stitch is made possible by Kai scissors.

(slow upbeat music) Bennos Buttons.

(slow upbeat music) OC Sewing, Orange County.

(slow upbeat music) Vogue Fabrics.

(slow upbeat music) Pendleton.

(slow upbeat music) Imitation of Life.

(slow upbeat music) And Clutch Nails.

(slow upbeat music) To order a four DVD set of Fit 2 Stitch series nine, please visit our website at fit2stitch.com.