Trust Margot Robbie to deliver all the spring styling inspiration we need in a 53-second video. In a new Chanel campaign film, the star breezes through a Paris street scene in wide-leg jeans, a white T-shirt and a boxy beige tweed jacket.
Opinions on the handbag at the centre of the campaign remain mixed. But there’s one thing everyone who’s watched the Michel Gondry film seems to agree on: the perfection of Robbie’s look.
As an outfit equation, “jeans and a nice jacket” is easier to emulate than the corseted ballgowns that have dominated Robbie’s recent red-carpet looks. No wonder retailers say trophy jackets have supplanted dresses as the outfit-makers of the moment and the pieces at the top of everyone’s shopping lists.
At LTK, the influencer-guided commerce platform, shopper searches for “bouclé jackets” were 97 per cent higher last week compared to the same time last year, with searches for cropped and tweed jackets up 88 and 90 per cent respectively. British womenswear brand Hush reports that its wool double-faced jacket is one of its season-to-date bestselling styles, with sales 208 per cent higher than at the same point last year.
And while With Nothing Underneath started as a shirting brand, the jacket category is growing rapidly in importance: sales of the classic Hutton blazer (originally offered in grey herringbone wool, now available in linen) are up 67 per cent year on year.
“For me, a blazer, T-shirt and jeans is the ultimate in pulled-together but effortlessly nonchalant dressing,” says WNU founder and chief executive Pip Durell. “The blazer brings structure and lift to the tee and jeans, giving it cool-girl off-duty dressing vibes.”
If in the past we might have bought a blazer as part of a complete suit, now we’re shopping for jackets as standalone pieces. It’s a trend with support at all levels of the market, from Lily Allen picking up a brown, green and blue tweed jacket at Chanel’s London boutique, to the women adding to their collection of Sézane’s bestselling Will jackets with a version in camel suede.
Consider jeans and a nice jacket spring’s follow-on to the look of the Christmas party season. Instead of wearing fitted, buttoned-up jackets in velvets and metallic fabrics, now we’re wearing them in a more relaxed way, unbuttoned over tanks and T-shirts.
“Pairing denim with a smarter jacket is a great example of the high-low styling that’s one of our pillars,” says Clare Hornby, Me+Em’s founder and chief executive. “The jacket pulls the outfit together, and pairing it with a more relaxed denim silhouette stops the overall look from feeling too polished.”
Hornby adds that jackets are “a hugely important part of our business” and that the right style can be “one of the hardest-working pieces in your wardrobe”.
The key is choosing a style that’s compatible with your favourite jeans. If, like Robbie, you’re into wide-leg jeans, balance them out with a cropped jacket on top. A classic blazer suits straight-leg jeans (wear with loafers). Dark, high-waisted jeans can handle a more decorative jacket, like Maksu’s striped cotton Palmi or East’s floral embroidered Odeline. Fans of barrel-cut jeans might enjoy a bomber or a boxy utility style.
For the ultimate spring jeans-and-a-nice-jacket look, try white or cream jeans with a white T-shirt and tan suede jacket. Keep it simple and streamlined (see Jigsaw’s patch-pocket jacket) or look for special details, like fringing or appliqués, for a jacket you’ll look forward to wearing year after year.
But back to Chanel. Styling Robbie in a bouclé jacket and wide-leg jeans represents yet another step in creative director Matthieu Blazy’s adroit repositioning of the legacy French fashion house. The real-world styling (because this is how younger women have long worn their grandmothers’ Chanel jackets) instantly turns the jacket into something more youthful, modern and wearable. It’s an image that says a Chanel jacket – despite the one Robbie wears coming with £8,350 price tag – shouldn’t be saved exclusively for dress-up occasions, but rather thrown on as an everyday piece.
Not that your nice jacket of choice has to be Chanel, of course. Click the arrows below for some of the best jackets to pair with jeans…