That All Over Chanel Tan

There's a few things that come to mind when you think of Chanel. The little black dresses, the bell bottom pants, the quilted handbags... but that's not everything. What about sun tans? Along with a thousand other trends, Coco Chanel helped popularise the sun-kissed look. It might sound surprising, but the curiously orange inhabitants of Essex are direct descendants of Coco Chanel's style philosophies.

Once upon a time, only labourers and farmers would spend enough time outside in the Sun to become tanned. Richer folk wanted to distance themselves from the lower classes and chose to keep a pale complexion to help cement their higher status.

It was all about class basically – so when their idol Coco Chanel returned from a trip abroad where she suffered from an accidental sunburn, the fashionistas of the time saw it as a brave fashion statement. They began to imitate Coco's accidental tan and a bronze skin colour transformed transformed from a symbol of the lower classes to a uniform of those who lived a life of leisure.

And that's how sunbathing was born – if it hadn't been for Coco Chanel's carelessness on holiday we might still be a culture of pale, sun-fearing folks who never wear sunglasses! And that would be a real tragedy given the high quality of Chanel sunglasses.

Coco Chanel loved a good suntan, so next time you wear your Chanel sunglasses on holiday, you can be sure you're getting the complete Chanel treatment.