Zodiac: Constellations into Couture

By Louis Entwistle (♋️)

The fascination many of us hold with our own star signs has only grown in the past 5 years, with apps built around telling us exactly what we should do and avoid on a day to day basis, to horoscope channels and pages teaching spirituality to the masses. However this phenomena certainly is not new, the 12 Zodiac signs being created in 1894 B.C.E and has been a constant source of mystery, debate and faith ever since.

As many great fashion stories start, the use of the Zodiac in a brands DNA can be traced back to the heydays of Elsa Schiaparelli and Coco Chanel. Each affiliated themselves with the Zodiac in a different way. For Coco, born under the Leo sign, her opulent apartment (31 Rue Cambon) was decorated with statues of Lions. The love of this motif blossoming further in 1919 when she travelled to Venice after the death of her lover Boy Capel. Notably in Venice, the winged lion statue guards the Doge’s Palace and is considered the protector of the city and representative of the patron saint, St Mark. Coco’s love and understanding of her star sign was introspective - “August 19th is my birthday. I was born under the sign of Leo. I am a Leo and, like a lion, I use my claws to prevent people from doing me harm, but, believe me, I suffer more from scratching than from being scratched.”

The Lion motif has cropped up time and time again within Chanel’s jewelleries and reimagined by Karl Lagerfeld on the set of the 10/11 FW Couture show.

Strikingly, Chanel’s greatest rival also held the Zodiacs close to her creative process. Elsa Schiaparelli’s Uncle (Giovanni Schiaparelli) was an astronomer and historian, working predominantly on mapping the surface of Mars in the late 19th century. This undoubtedly influenced Elsa, her work being the greatest translation of surrealism into fashion, harnessing the mysteries and folklore around the Zodiac to create a jacket adorned with constellations. Embroidered by the legendary house of Lesage (now a subsidiary of Chanel) the jacket appeared in Schiaparelli’s 1938 A/W collection and was cut in midnight blue velvet, the zodiac signs cascading down the lapels in contrasting gold thread. This particular piece sold on the 3rd of December 2013 at auction for £136,400.

From these examples, the zodiac signs have cropped up time and time again. Usually drumming up sales for houses as people flock to secure their handbag that says “I’M A CAPRICORN OKAY!” or something to that tune. As the popularity of pawing over your own star sign has soared, one can only hope that the history of them in fashion is revisited and respected. With the freedom of belief, and a growing amount of people choosing to remain agnostic and wondering what is out there in a broader sense, the idea of believing in manifestation energy, zodiac signs and crystals isn’t some fringe hippie ideal. Wouldn’t it be fabulous to see a renaissance in decadent Zodiac couture? I certainly think so.