Most of the clothes people think of as ordinary were designed by someone, at a specific address, for a specific reason. The high street versions came later, sometimes decades later, and by then the original point of the design had been forgotten. Here are eight pieces you can buy anywhere now, and where each one actually came from.
1. The trench coat, from Burberry
Thomas Burberry patented gabardine in 1879, a cotton twill waterproofed at the yarn rather than coated as finished cloth, which meant a raincoat that breathed instead of sweating you. The V&A’s account of the garment traces the fabric back to the shrink-tight linen smocks worn by farm labourers. Burberry patented a belted, knee-length version called the Tielocken before the First World War, and British officers wore it in the trenches that gave the coat its name. The details are all military leftovers: epaulettes held rank insignia, the D-rings on the belt carried equipment, the storm flap shed rain off the shoulder. Aquascutum has a competing claim, and nobody has settled it.
2. The little black dress, from Chanel
Before 1926 a black dress meant mourning or domestic service. Coco Chanel put out a plain black crepe de chine shift with long sleeves and a hem below the knee, and American Vogue ran an illustration of it that October under a nickname that stuck: the Ford, after the Model T. The Metropolitan Museum’s entry on the dress describes it as a blank surface for accessories, which is exactly why it worked. Critics at the time thought it looked like something a maid would wear. Within a decade it was the most reliable garment in a woman’s wardrobe.
3. The tuxedo for women, from Yves Saint Laurent
Le Smoking arrived in 1966 and caused more trouble than a suit reasonably should. Trousers on women in formal settings were still refused at the door in some places. The story that gets retold is Nan Kempner being turned away from a New York restaurant for wearing hers, taking the trousers off and walking to her table in the jacket alone. Saint Laurent kept the design in his collections for years while everyone else caught up. Every women’s tuxedo since is a variation on it.
4. The wrap dress, from Diane von Furstenberg
Von Furstenberg launched the jersey wrap in 1974, and it sold in the millions because it solved several problems at once. No zip, no buttons, one size adjustment built into the tie, and a jersey knit that survived a suitcase. It suited a generation of women who were going to work in numbers their mothers had not, and it needed no ironing on the way. The shape has never really left, which is unusual for a dress that specific.
5. The rectangular watch, from Cartier
Louis Cartier sketched the Tank in 1917 after looking at Renault FT-17 tanks on the Western Front from above. The two flat vertical bars that run down each side of the case, called brancards, stand in for the treads, and the dial sits between them like the body of the vehicle. A prototype went to General John Pershing. The first six production pieces were not sold until 1919, and they went immediately. Almost every rectangular dress watch made since owes it something, which is worth knowing if you are working out how to buy your first proper watch and wondering why that shape costs what it does.
6. The polo shirt, from Lacoste
René Lacoste was a tennis champion who was tired of playing in long-sleeved woven shirts, so in 1933 he put his name to a short-sleeved knitted piqué cotton shirt with a soft collar and a longer tail at the back. The collar could be turned up against sun on the neck. The knit breathed. Lacoste had been nicknamed the Crocodile by the press, and the embroidered animal on the chest is generally credited as the first designer logo worn on the outside of a garment. Every polo shirt in every colour since is that shirt.
7. Red soles, from Christian Louboutin
In 1993 Louboutin looked at a prototype and decided the black sole made the shoe look dead. An assistant was painting her nails nearby, and he took the red varnish and painted the sole with it. The colour has been the house signature since, defended through a long run of trademark cases across several countries. It is the rare example of a design detail that is purely a marker, doing nothing for the shoe’s function, and it still works: a flash of red under a heel is legible from across a room.
8. The roomy top-handle bag, from Hermès
The Birkin came out of a flight in 1984. Jane Birkin was sitting next to Jean-Louis Dumas, then head of Hermès, and the contents of her straw basket went across the floor. She told him she could not find a leather bag that held enough. He designed one for her, and the shape that resulted, deep, soft-sided, wide-mouthed, with two short handles and no fuss, is now copied at every price point on the market. Each one is still made by a single craftsman over roughly fifteen to twenty hours.
What the pattern tells you
Look at the list and the same thing keeps happening. Almost none of these were designed to be luxurious. The trench kept officers dry, the polo shirt kept a tennis player cool, the wrap dress went in a suitcase, the black dress needed no decoration. They lasted because they solved something, and the status came afterwards, usually long afterwards.
Which is a useful thing to remember when a shop tries to sell you a design on its heritage. The heritage is real. It just started with someone being irritated by a practical problem, and the pieces worth owning tend to be the ones still solving it.
