Stand back from this Chanel tweed jacket from Paris–Salzburg and it becomes a valley seen from a train window: a field of loden green, a dark band of pine, the thin red line of a road, and a row of ecru loops like the first snow along a fence.

Round every edge runs a braid twisted from the same yarns. A long zip closes it where an Austrian jacket would button. And at one cuff, small enough to miss until the hand moves, swings a small deer charm: a stag in a ring, carrying the House's initials.

It belongs to Paris–Salzburg, the collection Karl Lagerfeld showed at Schloss Leopoldskron on 2 December 2014.^† This is the runway model, offered never worn, in French size 38.^†

Picture a grand hotel in the mountains, 1954. A brass lift cage, a boy at the lever in a short jacket: stand collar, a row of buttons, a line of braid. A guest past seventy watches him all the way up.

Austria, 1954

That, in the House's own telling, is where Gabrielle Chanel found her jacket: in the lift attendant's uniform, in a hotel near Salzburg.^†† Lagerfeld filmed it in 2014 as Reincarnation: Pharrell Williams the lift boy, Cara Delevingne Empress Elisabeth.^†

Scotland, the 1920s

The other story smells of rain and peat. In the 1920s Chanel summered on the Duke of Westminster's Reay Forest estate in Sutherland, stalking and fishing in his tweed jackets; the House traces her tweed to those years.^†

A timber hut, a sky washed grey-blue, a strip of ochre grass. No people, only weather and wood: John Singer Sargent painted this corner of the Tyrol in 1871, at fifteen.^†

Dressed for the picture

Soon the whole world knew the costume: in 1889 an American cigarette card files a Tyrolean girl under National Dances: red skirt, laced bodice, a feather in a green hat.^†

Olivier, 1823

Ferdinand Olivier drew seven places around Salzburg, one for each day of the week. On Tuesday a man in a hat and a short, fitted jacket walks his dog below the fortress: Tracht, the source of this collection.^†

Lanz, 1922

Then Salzburg dressed the world: the Tracht house Lanz opened in 1922, the year of the first Salzburg Festival.^† Cecil Beaton's Lanz jacket is now at The Met.^†

Bookshelves to the ceiling, honey-coloured parquet, and between them a model in suede shorts and lace-up boots, walking as if late for the hunt. On 2 December 2014 Chanel showed Paris–Salzburg in the rooms of Schloss Leopoldskron, a rococo palace on a lake by Salzburg.^††

The theme

Lagerfeld worked from Austrian and Tyrolean dress, Tracht, without dressing anyone in costume.^†

• Loden hats with feathers, on Tyrolean lines.^†
• Capes embroidered with Alpine flowers.^†
• Lederhosen rethought as short suede shorts.^†
• Felt flowers on dresses and jackets.^†

The look

This model walked in the show, in a richer, hand-applied trim of felt flowers; the version made for clients keeps the same cut and cloth, framed in braid.^†

Seen from across a room, it is a landscape before it is a jacket: bands of loden and Alpine navy lie one above the other like fields under a darkening sky, and between them runs a single stitch of crimson, the way a road shows through a valley.

Come closer and the cloth begins to move. The pale rows rise in loops, soft as the first snow on a fence rail; a thread of gold wakes in the dark only when the light turns.

The line is simple, almost severe: no collar, no buttons, the hem stopping at the hip. Everything festive is pushed to the edges, where a twisted braid holds the jacket the way a carved gilt frame holds a painting.

Down the front, one bright line of metal, straight as a mountain path. And at one cuff, small enough to miss, a stag.

Turn it to the window and the bands begin to travel: loden, navy, a flicker of crimson, then a row of ecru loops as soft as snow on a fence rail.

Colour

Loden green and Alpine navy carry the weight. Between them run single stitches of crimson, like the embroidery on a feast-day bodice.

Texture

• Flat stripes woven tight, almost like a ribbon.
• Raised rows of looped, knotted yarn that catch the light.
• A thread of metal in the dark ground; it shows only when you move.

On an Austrian jacket the edge is where the feast day lives: a cord of green or red that turns plain cloth into Sunday best. Chanel kept the idea and made it her signature.

What it does

• Frames the jacket the way a carved frame holds a painting.
• Repeats the cloth: three of its yarns, twisted into one cord.
• Replaces the Tyrolean horn buttons. Here a zip runs between two rows of it: one straight, modern line through the folklore.
• Edges the two hip pockets too: slanted openings, braid-bound.

Raise a glass and something small catches the light at the wrist: the deer charm, a gilt stag's head in a ring, the interlaced CC above its antlers.

Read it

• Where on the cuff, not the chest. You see it only when the hand moves.
• The ring a hunting medal.
• The CC a seal on the trophy.

Trophies

The Alps have long turned the hunt into jewellery: in 1758 the Austrian carver Martin Gizl mounted a ewer of ibex horn in gold.^† Here the trophy shrinks to a charm, and becomes the jacket's signature.