Chanel

Chanel was founded in Paris in 1910 by Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel, who opened a millinery shop on rue Cambon before expanding into sportswear and eveningwear. Her proposition was to strip Edwardian dress of its corsetry and ornament, borrowing from menswear, jersey fabric, and the uniforms of sailors and stable hands.

Critics and historians have long described her early work as the arrival of modern dress, and the little black dress she published in Vogue in 1926 was famously likened to a “Ford,” a shorthand for its standardization and reach.

Menswear has never been a serious ready-to-wear category for the house, but Chanel has dressed men for a century through fragrance, eyewear, watches, fine jewelry, and small accessories. Pour Monsieur launched in 1955, followed by Antaeus in 1981, Égoïste in 1990, Allure Homme in 1999, and Bleu de Chanel in 2010.

Bleu became one of the best-selling men’s fragrances in the world within a year, fronted first by Gaspard Ulliel from 2010 until his death in 2022, then Timothée Chalamet in 2023, and Australian actor Jacob Elordi as face for 2026. Within the luxury fragrance and accessories trade,

Chanel sits alongside Dior, Hermès, and Tom Ford as one of the French houses that defined the modern men’s grooming and accessories category. Allure Homme won the Fragrance Foundation’s Fragrance of the Year for Men’s Prestige in 1999.

After Gabrielle Chanel’s death in 1971, the house drifted until Karl Lagerfeld took creative control in 1983 and ran the collections for thirty-six years, reworking the tweed suit, the camellia, and the interlocking CC logo across ready-to-wear, handbags, and runway productions inside the Grand Palais.

Lagerfeld briefly flirted with menswear in the 2010s, slipping men’s looks into Métiers d’Art and cruise shows with French model Baptiste Giabiconi, his muse from 2008 onward and the first male model to front Chanel womenswear campaigns.

Virginie Viard succeeded Lagerfeld in 2019, and Matthieu Blazy was announced as artistic director of fashion activities in late 2024. The Wertheimer family retains private ownership, annual revenue runs above 19 billion dollars, and the house sits at the top of the French fashion industry.

For men, Chanel operates through fragrance, eyewear, fine watches including the J12 and Monsieur de Chanel, and cufflinks, ties, and leather goods sold through its boutiques, with no dedicated ready-to-wear line.