As the former editor of Paris Vogue, Carine Roitfeld is indisputably the reigning queen of French style.
Now she has paid tribute to an icon of fashion past by dressing up as legendary designer Coco Chanel.
Recreating a famous portrait of the label’s founder taken in the Sixties, she poses with a cigarette in a low-brimmed boater hat and pearls.
Roitfeld, 57, was captured during a shoot for a new book, The Little Black Jacket, which will celebrate the iconic Chanel garment. Joining forces with Karl Lagerfeld, the much anticipated book which is set to debut this fall. the hype surrounding its release is already in full swing with renowned actors, singers, models and artists invited to model the timeless jacket in their own way.
Among the 100 famous faces involved are Sarah Jessica Parker, who wove hers into a decorative crown, and actress Virginie Ledoyen dressed as Marie Antoinette, complete with towering pink beehive.
Crown jewels: Sarah Jessica Parker is one of the many actors who dressed up in Chanel's little black jacket for the book, she wore hers through a bejeweled crown
Virginie Ledoyen, of The Beach fame, wore her Chanel black jacket as a modern-day Marie Antoinette complete with the soaring beehive
In a behind the scenes film, Georgia May Jagger, Mick Jagger's model daughter plays a modern day Bardot in her black jacket. Karl Largerfeld, the creative force at the helm of Chanel today, can be seen in the video photographing each leading lady himself.
Since it's inception in the fifties, Coco Chanel's little black jacket has been a fundamental part of the fashion house, with Largerfeld reinventing it for Chanel season after season.
The timeless black jacket sits alongside other iconic and covetable fashion pieces, such as the Hermes Birkin bag, or a Cartier watch,as an item most women will only ever dream of owning. Retailing between $7,000 and $24,000, Chanel's jacket sits at a price-point far above the average person's spending means.
Karl Largerfeld and Carine Roitfeld, the books co-creators, have a discerning look at the days images and edit out their favourites with the team
The hype surrounding the series of photographs of fashion's biggest movers and shakers wearing their black Chanel jacket for the book coincides with an exhibition in Tokyo also dedicated to the jacket, which opens this month.
To further celebrate the iconic black jacket, which Lagerfeld called 'one of the symbols that defines the style of Chanel,' the fashion house made a captivating video which reveals each stage of its creation, from the original sketch by Mr Lagerfeld to the exquisitely expensive, but beautiful, finished product.
The Little Black Jacket: Chanel's Classic Revisited by Karl Lagerfeld and Carine Roitfeld will be available in bookstores fall 2012.
INSIDE THE CHANEL STUDIO: HOW THE LITTLE BLACK JACKET IS MADE
If you ever wondered how Chanel makes its most covetable and classic pieces, the fashion house has released a special behind-the-scenes video in the lead up to The Little Black Jacket book's release.
The video shows all of the intricate stages that go into hand-making Chanel's most classic black jacket.
Inception: Mr Largerfeld draws his sketch of the little black jacket which Chanel's couturiers use as their only guide to making the piece
Pattern making: A pattern of the jacket is created using the sketch, the pieces are then cut out of Chanel's luxurious fabric ready to be sewn together
Final touches: Lining the jacket with Chanel's signature chain is the last step before the iconic jacket is complete
Picture perfect: Chanel's team uses a fit model to ensure the jacket fits in all the right places before the final product's approval
Viewers are guided through every process, from sketching and pattern-making, to the final model fitting.
The details that make the jacket so unique are especially fascinating, such as the way a chain is stitched into the jacket's lining to make it hang so beautifully.
From the Daily Mail
