Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, women experimented with fashion, wearing miniskirts, space-age suits and hippie robes, but the quilted 2.55 remained a fashion fixture. It appealed to young and old alike, and was worn by women as different as the ultra-chic Jackie Kennedy, the fashionable young actress Mia Farrow and the ostentatious Liz Taylor. When Karl Lagerfeld joined Chanel in 1983, he began experimenting with the 2.55, making it in tweed and varying its size.

In the 1990s, Lagerfeld became increasingly audacious, producing bags of enormous proportions, creating quirky patchwork versions and a witty vanity case. However outlandish the designs, though, the Chanel bag never lost its identity. It has always stood for taste and quality. Fifty years on, the original 1955 bag has been reissued and it still makes even the most style-savvy woman go weak at the knees.

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