A beautiful Christian Lacroix jacket was recently gifted to me. Made in wool plaid, it features interesting trims, buttons, and lining. The former owner, Mrs. L.B., is equally interesting and beautiful. She grew up in Georgia and, after graduating from college as an art major, she took jobs and lived in Boston, then New York City. She worked with art dealers, specializing in 19th-century American paintings, and was neighbors and friends with Andy Warhol and Jamie Browning Wyeth, son of Andrew Wyeth.

Minimal shaping in Christian Lacroix jacket

This fabulous jacket was purchased in the ’80s from a showroom in New York. The hip-length garment has a boxy shape in order to better match and showcase the plaid, in my opinion. The only shaping I observed was from fish-eye darts in the jacket fronts.

The jacket back, cut on the fold, includes small darts at the back neck on either side of the center back.

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Pockets and flaps

The right front features two pocket flaps cut on the bias.

 

The upper flap hides no pocket, but the lower one conceals a working single-welt pocket.

At the lower left front, there’s a matching single-welt pocket with flap.

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Buttons

The jacket closes with three covered buttons that showcase decorative passementerie in colors to match the plaid fabric.

 

The upper collar is cut on the bias fold, and the undercollar is a standard bias version cut in two pieces. Applied fringe trim embellishes the collar’s outer edges. The trim’s colors mirror those in the jacket.

 

Sleeves

Each sleeve is one piece but has the look of a two-piece sleeve. The vertical seam is sewn where the inner seam on a two-piece sleeve typically would be, slightly forward of the underarm. There is a 9 1/2-inch dart…