The Chanel jacket is enjoying a resurgence: the story of a boom foretold

Everyone who has tried one on says the same thing: “You have to wear it to understand.” The Chanel jacket, a centrepiece of the French house, requires a physical encounter to be truly appreciated. This is a significant detail in an era where desire is almost always sparked through a screen. However, it has not stopped the value of this icon from soaring on the second-hand fashion market. What is behind this sudden surge in desirability? Is the Chanel suit jacket on its way to becoming as powerful a speculative asset as the Birkin bag? FashionUnited has investigated the matter.

What is so special about a Chanel jacket?

First, what exactly are we talking about? The tweed suit, and with it the jacket, was born at Chanel in the 1920s. The story is well known: “Inspired by the relaxed elegance of the men in her life, particularly the Duke of Westminster, [Gabrielle Chanel] transgressed the dress codes of her time by choosing fabrics for their comfort, such as jersey and later tweed, which she made even more supple.”

The document provided by the couture house specifies one of the reasons for the Chanel jacket's success: its straight, structured, edge-to-edge line. This is what defines the silhouette.

“The elegance of the garment is the freedom to move,” declared the great couturière, and the construction of the iconic jacket adheres solely to this principle.

The creation of the piece follows precise specifications. The front is mounted on the straight grain without bust darts to gain flexibility without losing support. The same principle applies to the back, which is simply separated by a centre seam. The sleeve is set high on the shoulder to ensure maximum ease of movement. The lining meets the same requirements: “as many panels [editor's note: the width of a fabric between its two selvedges] of lining as panels of tweed. (...) The two fabrics, intimately and almost invisibly topstitched, then move together, with nothing hindering the movement.”

The Chanel jacket is also known for its brass chain, sewn into the lining to ensure a perfect drape. It is also recognised for its braids and its jewel-like buttons made of galalith, resin or metal, which were often adorned with the double C from the Karl Lagerfeld era onwards.

“A Chanel jacket (...) is a staple of the female wardrobe. It is a timeless model, suitable for women and men of all ages.”

This combination of structure and comfort contributes to its success. For Kerry Taylor, founder of the British auction house of the same name, its strength lies in its versatility. Contacted via email by FashionUnited, she states: “An instantly recognisable Chanel jacket, which can be worn with jeans as well as with a skirt or trousers, is a staple of the female wardrobe. It is also a timeless model, suitable for women and men of all ages. In fact, more and more men are buying them.”

How much does a Chanel suit jacket cost?

Twice a year, the British house Kerry Taylor Auctions holds a sale called “Passion for Fashion,” featuring several fashion brands. By analysing the results of sales between 2020 and 2025, FashionUnited has observed an increase in the average price of Chanel tweed suits sold at auction.

Kerry Taylor confirms: “The prices of pieces from before Virginie Viard [former artistic director of Chanel] have undeniably increased.” She adds: “Buyers are [also] looking for certain characteristic elements of Karl Lagerfeld's Chanel vocabulary: the chains; the obvious use of the logo and buttons; the magnificent fantasy tweeds.” She also notes that the Métiers d'art collections, which are akin to demi-couture in terms of materials and embellishments, are “particularly sought-after”.

According to the founder, this popularity is partly because “buyers see these garments as good value for money compared to the cost of a new Chanel jacket today”.

In December 2025, a black and brown tweed Chanel jacket by Karl Lagerfeld from the autumn/winter 2018-19 collection sold for 1,430 pounds at Kerry Taylor Auctions. In France, at the Penelope’s auction house, a 2020 Chanel jacket offered at 600 euros (estimated between 700 and 1,000 euros) sold for 2,990 euros. These prices are high for most consumers but remain well below those of current collections. On the brand's website, tweed jackets from the spring/summer 2026 collection are priced at nearly 9,000 euros.

Although still below the price of contemporary collections, resale prices for Chanel jackets are rising almost everywhere. “Previously, a Chanel jacket would resell for around 1,500 euros, then that doubled in 2015,” says Tami Kern, founder of the second-hand fashion company Kern1 and a Chanel jacket specialist. “It stayed that way for a few years and since Covid-19, it has increased again. Now, resale prices are between 2,500 and 3,000 euros.”

This price increase indicates that the value retention of the Chanel suit jacket is good, even excellent, at least in the long term. So far, the Chanel jacket does not seem to have become a short-term speculative asset like an Hermès Birkin bag.

“The Chanel suit jacket remains a safe investment,” confirms Pénélope Blanckaert of the Penelope's auction house by telephone. “If you invest in Chanel, [you know that] it will not lose value. For it to fetch high prices, it needs to be branded and visible. We do not value a jacket without an external logo in the same way as one with a logo on the buttons or elsewhere, although it remains a very identifiable product nonetheless.”

While this enthusiasm is focused on archive pieces, current collections are certainly contributing to this success.

From Matthieu Blazy to the 'old money' trend

Upon his arrival at Chanel in 1983, Karl Lagerfeld gave the suit jacket a new lease of life. “He reinterpreted it with impertinence and humour, capturing the spirit of the times and women's desires like no other,” reads the document sent by the Rue Cambon house. This statement also applies to the recent work of Matthieu Blazy, the brand's artistic director appointed in December 2024.

“Matthieu Blazy has brought desirability back to the Chanel jacket,” states Tami Kern. “Usually, Chanel is ahead of what is to come, whereas Blazy is more in the moment, in the present. This brings in new customers.”

In his three shows for the French house, the Franco-Belgian designer placed the suit at the heart of the collection. The suit is lighter, ruffled, frayed and twisted with different materials. It is sometimes crafted by the ateliers Flou rather than the ateliers Tailleurs, as tradition would dictate. This freedom of construction is matched by a freedom of colour: a palette of cosmetic shades for the Haute Couture show, or pop and urban tones for the Métiers d'Art show. In short, a breath of fresh air that has won over both the public and the fashion press.

“Tweed can quickly become heavy and shapeless, but Blazy's seemed surprisingly light,” wrote Nicole Phelps for Vogue Runway about the spring/summer 2026 collection, Blazy's first for Chanel. She added: “It has been years since Chanel's short tweed jacket was a cult object, highly coveted and widely copied, but Blazy has brought it back into fashion.”

A few months later, in December 2025, model Bhavitha Mandava opened the Chanel Métiers d’art show on a New York subway platform. She had a Chanel jacket casually thrown over the large quilted leather bag she carried on her shoulder. What followed was a cinematic staging, where models came and went in this everyday setting, their jackets or coats over their arms, catapulting the couture house into the real lives of city women. The Chanel tweed jacket thus shed its last vestiges of stuffiness to embrace a reality with which the younger generation can identify.

This is precisely the target audience. Gen Z (the generation born between the late 1990s and the early 2010s) represents the clientele Chanel needs to attract. This generation views the jacket through the filter of the famous TikTok trend: the “old money aesthetic”.

The “old money” style is a trend that truly took off in 2023 and continues into 2026. It is a cultural and aesthetic phenomenon that favours quality and a certain classicism through iconic pieces like the loafer, the cable-knit sweater and the Chanel suit.

However, the renewed popularity of the piece in question goes far beyond this trend. According to Google Trends data, the “old money” aesthetic is currently showing a slight decline, while interest in the Chanel suit is on the rise.

On the search engine, the query “tweed suit” has increased by 70 percent since Matthieu Blazy's first show for Chanel in October 2025. The same is true for the queries “Chanel style jacket” and “Chanel jacket price” (up 70 percent over the last five months). This second query demonstrates genuine consumer interest in the piece and a desire to purchase. It is often associated with a search for “Chanel jackets vintage” (also on the rise).

The high price of new items generally pushes consumers towards the second-hand fashion channel, but this alone does not explain the choice for pre-loved. Beyond the “old money” trend and the spotlight from Matthieu Blazy, the widespread interest in fashion archives and vintage in recent years has also contributed to the rising popularity of the historic Chanel jacket.

Parallel network of vintage Chanel jackets

Tami Kern has been a resale specialist since 2015. Based in Amsterdam, she exclusively trades in Chanel jackets from the 1980s and 1990s. She reports selling around 200 pieces a year and has built a loyal group of buyers who sometimes purchase several jackets a month.

To sell her exceptional pieces, Kern used to undertake extensive editorial work, creating polished images worthy of the item's iconic status. Recently, however, she reports observing a change in how her customers buy: “Last year, I saw people who just wanted a photo of the jacket on me before buying it. No need for a special photo.”

“It takes a lot of time to create a jacket, but also to find the one you want.”

Yet, according to her, buying one of her jackets takes time: “You might find it tomorrow or in eight years. It requires patience. It takes a lot of time to create a jacket, but also to find the one you want. It is a quest, and many people no longer have that patience.”

This new way of acquiring a Chanel jacket, quickly and without a fitting, is also adopted by users of online platforms like Vestiaire Collective, Resee, The RealReal and other second-hand fashion sites. This sales network has developed in parallel with the official network owned by the house of Chanel and despite its wishes.

The brand is now one of the few fashion houses that sells its ready-to-wear collections only in its own stores and does not have an e-commerce site. “The boutique remains at the heart of the experience we wish to offer our clients,” explains a Chanel advisor in a WhatsApp message. “It is important to us that the discovery of our collections and the first purchase take place in this context.”

The Chanel group is determined to enforce this control and did not hesitate to file a lawsuit against The RealReal in 2018. The action aimed to defend “the principle that even authentic products, when sold or marketed under poor conditions, can threaten the integrity of a luxury brand,” as reported by The Fashion Law.

Specifically, the luxury group accused The RealReal of attempting to mislead consumers into believing that Chanel had authenticated the second-hand fashion items for sale on the platform or that the house had an affiliation with it.

Of course, the house cannot generally prevent the resale of the Chanel jacket. A fundamental rule of the Intellectual Property Code (CPI) states that the “trademark right” ends after the point-of-sale. In other words, the brand “exhausts” its right of control over the Chanel jacket once it receives the customer's payment and the sale is complete. If the customer bought the jacket in France, they can then resell it in the same country or elsewhere in Europe.

This legal freedom has generated a very large stock of Chanel jackets for sale on second-hand fashion channels worldwide. “We always have Chanel pieces,” says Pénélope Blanckaert regarding the Penelope’s auctions. At the time of writing, 4,433 “Chanel jackets” are listed on the resale site Vestiaire Collective. Yet, while the quantity is there, the luxury experience diminishes in the coldness of digital interfaces and the speed of dematerialised transactions.

This is where Tami Kern's work becomes truly meaningful. In keeping with the Chanel spirit, Kern understands perfectly the importance of the place of purchase. It is through this that the buyer creates a connection with the piece: “it gives it a certain soul,” she says.

One could even argue that the position of a specialist like Kern contributes to the aura of the Chanel jacket. In a world flooded with ultra-realistic counterfeits (“superfakes”), independent experts act as a filter of trust. Furthermore, the care taken in repairing the pieces and the knowledge of their past (who owned it? was it worn for a special occasion, etc.) contribute to the jacket's iconic status. After all, is not luxury today also found in the longevity and the history that clothes and accessories experience after their initial sale?