Turn a Chanel jacket inside out and the first thing you notice is the weight at the hem. A fine gold chain runs along the inside bottom edge, the full length of the jacket. It isn't decoration; no one is meant to see it. It's there so the jacket hangs straight, pulls down against the shoulders, and never rides up when you move. That chain is the whole philosophy of the house in one detail. The luxury is in the part you can't see.

Coco Chanel built the jacket that bears her name in 1954, the year she reopened her house at seventy-one, after more than a decade away. The comeback collection was met coolly in Paris and embraced in America. The suit she showed, a collarless tweed jacket cut for movement over an easy skirt, became the thing women actually wanted to live in. She had spent her career taking things away: the corset, the stiffness, the idea that elegance had to hurt. The jacket was that argument made in wool.

What makes it hers is the construction, most of which is invisible. The lining is quilted directly to the tweed, panel by panel, so the two move as one and the jacket holds its shape with no stiff inner structure. The sleeves are set high and narrow, so you can lift your arms without the whole thing lifting with them. The buttons work. The pockets sit exactly where a hand falls. Chanel had studied how men's jackets were made, borrowing English tweeds and the ease of her lovers' wardrobes, and rebuilt all of it for a woman who had somewhere to be.

Karl Lagerfeld took over in 1983 and, for thirty-six years, didn't replace the formula so much as play with it. He cropped it, frayed it, ran it in denim and terrycloth and neon, sent it out a hundred different ways. The codes never moved: the chain, the quilted lining, the honest construction. That's why a piece from the eighties and a late Lagerfeld jacket still read as the same object. The house decided what the jacket was a long time ago and has spent seventy years proving it.

It's also why the jacket holds up in resale in a way most designer clothing doesn't. Clothes usually lose the plot after a few seasons. The shoulders date, the cut curdles. A Chanel jacket was built outside of trend, so a well-kept one from fifteen years ago still hangs the way it was meant to. The tweed was woven to last. The chain is still doing its job. You're buying construction, not a moment.

That construction is the reason we pay attention when a Chanel jacket comes through at Labels — right now, a tan suede crop with frayed tweed trim, a different animal from the classic wool but the same unmistakable hand.

If you've never tried one on, it's worth doing once, if only to feel the hem settle. See what's in, or book a private appointment.