Style files: What five things would you put in a fashion archive?

Some innovations have come off the runway, gone through several iterations, endured over decades and stayed in our wardrobes, far longer perhaps than even their makers anticipated. What would a popular archive of fashion history hold? Shefalee Vasudev, fashion writer and editor-in-chief of the digital magazine The Voice of Fashion, lists her top five.

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Burberry trench coat

By the turn of the century, the British army was using this English invention to clothe its officers. By the time World War 1 began, they had already commissioned a special design.
The Burberry trench coat was designed for life in the trenches. It had rings that could be hitched to flasks, maps and grenades; and room for epaulettes. It was long, warm and waterproof.
It quickly became a status symbol with civilians too, as men and women bought it as a gesture of national pride. It was used in World War 2 as well. It lives on all these decades later, its trademark checked pattern typically used in the lining.
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Chanel tweed jacket
Boxy, relaxed and made of wool, this creation made its debut in 1925. Defined by elegance and straight cuts, it represented Coco Chanel’s response to (and rejection of) the torturous corsets still prevalent at the time. The jacket, it is said, was inspired by a sweater she borrowed from her then boyfriend Hugh Grosvenor, Duke of Westminster, as they explored the Scottish Highlands together. Wearing it, she would later say, she realised the comfort that women were missing out on. Over the past century, the Chanel tweed jacket has been revived, redesigned and re-released in a range of iterations.
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Dior’s “New Look”
Rounded shoulders, cinched waists and pleated, voluminous skirts made up Christian Dior’s “New Look”, his first collection, in 1947. After the years of scarcity and austerity amid World War 2, there was a lush muchness to these clothes. The collection began to be called the rebirth of French couture. With it, Dior “brought back the neglected art of pleasing”, he would later write, in his autobiography Dior by Dior (1956).
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Yves Saint Laurent pants for women
Before Yves Saint Laurent designed a pant-suit for women, women’s suits were generally paired with skirts of many lengths. In echoes of Chanel, half a century later, another French designer was freeing women from the shackles of “should be”. The first pantsuit was unleashed in the Spring/Summer 1967 collection. Saint Laurent called it Le Smoking, and immediately put out a ready-to-wear line too, so that more women could access the designs, and help the radical idea spread.
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Bottega Veneta Knot clutch
Developed by Tomas Maier, who was then a creative director with the brand, it was inspired by a small, rounded box clutch from 1978 that he saw in the archives of the Italian design house. He kept the shape and gave it a new clasp: a woven knot made of leather. The clutch hit the runway in 2002, and has been a part of several collections since. The Knot has been reinterpreted in a number of ways. There have been the Origami Knot, Vintage Jewel Knot, Metal Lace Knot, Memory Knot and more. The label even held a Knot retrospective, in 2014.