There are photos from the thirties of Coco Chanel and friends wearing their boyfriends’ tweeds which are touchingly a little too big for them.

Their chic derives from the line – the clothes have that clearline, masculine cut which gives women an air of fragile elegance.

Oversized women’s clothes never give off that feeling and only delineate everything and anything that today’s women and fashion want to avoid at all costs.

This year’s prêt-à-porter collection is not a Chanel Menswear collection please note!

It’s a proposition, a way of wearing a straighter, from the shoulder cut that is perfect for the girls who stride down the runway.

The very same clothes, (naturally, this excludes the chiffon dresses!) in bigger sizes could easily be worn without any ambiguity by boys who have the physique ‘of the moment.’

Jeans, tank tops, t-shirts and sportswear have already done a great deal to blur the differences between menswear and womenswear. The zip is the judgement of Solomon when it comes down to which side a man or a woman should button their clothes.

Coco filched a lot from men’s dressing rooms. She knew how to transform men’s clothes with her particular genius and gave these clothes a definitive legitimacy.

Chanel today only proposes a version of this which will underline and accentuate the fragility and the strength of the modern woman.

Some men – or should one say, boys – could wear some of these clothes just as they wear plenty of things today which have abandoned the frontiers between menswear and womenswear.

During the 1920s Chanel was greatly influenced by Fair Isle knitwear and geometric designs and these motifs are evident in this year’s ready to wear collection.

In the thirties, for day and evening wear, she started to use crisp frills around collars and cuffs in a strongly contrasting colour, often white on a black suit or dress. This look was to become one of her many signatures. Lagerfeld continues to use it to this day as you can see in the Little Lord Fauntelroy suit and blouse at the beginning of this article.