Fashion Has Been Reading the Stars Since 1938

Fashion keeps a horoscope column pinned to its moodboard. Every few years a designer looks up, sees the zodiac, and discovers that it is the cheapest, oldest, most portable theme there is: twelve characters, everyone already knows their own.

• Elsa Schiaparelli’s Fall/Winter 1938-39 Astrological collection included a Zodiac jacket embroidered with the twelve signs and the Great Bear, made with the house of Lesage ^[1].
• Her house revived the jacket in 2017 for its 90th anniversary, using the original 1938 embroidery sample, which still exists ^[1].
• Karl Lagerfeld built an 18-meter golden lion for Chanel’s 2010 couture show to honor Coco Chanel’s sign, Leo ^[2].
• Versace (2016), Vetements (2017), Tommy Hilfiger x Zendaya (2019), Zimmermann (2022) and Gucci (2023) all drew on zodiac symbolism ^[2].

1938: the first great zodiac jacket

The moment most histories point to is Elsa Schiaparelli’s Fall/Winter 1938-39 Astrological collection. Its centerpiece, the Zodiac jacket, carried the twelve signs along with the constellation Ursa Major, worked in beads and gold embroidery by the Lesage atelier, with Madame Lesage designing the pattern herself ^[1]. It was fashion as star map, and it set the template: take a symbol everyone knows and render it with craft nobody can fake.

The jacket proved durable. In 2017, as Schiaparelli celebrated its 90th anniversary and regained official haute couture status, design director Bertrand Guyon led a revival in midnight blue using what he described as “the exact same technique and elements”; the original embroidery sample, made by Lesage in 1938, still exists ^[1].

The superstitious house and its heirs

Christian Dior was famously superstitious after a fortune-teller’s prediction, and his successors kept the habit. John Galliano worked astrological prints into his maximalist 1997 collection, and Maria Grazia Chiuri honored Dior’s mystical side with tarot and constellation motifs in 2017 ^[2]. Karl Lagerfeld, for Chanel’s 2010 couture show, constructed an 18-meter golden lion in honor of Coco Chanel’s sign, Leo, turning a zodiac emblem into brand architecture ^[2].

Before and after the headline collections

The 1938 jacket sits inside a longer line of fashion and the stars. A Coveteur survey of the theme notes that a fortune teller once told the young Christian Dior that women would be lucky for him and bring him success, a story that helps explain his superstitious reputation ^[2]. John Galliano’s Spring/Summer 1997 “Circus” collection included a bias-cut dress with astrological printing and a web of chains and charms across the back ^[2]. Emilio Pucci’s Autumn/Winter 2015 collection, the last by creative director Peter Dundas, showed body-hugging dark navy pieces with star signs embroidered in gold beads and large celestial prints ^[2]. In Spring/Summer 2017, Maria Grazia Chiuri brought tarot, zodiac and constellation motifs to Dior as an homage to the founder’s superstitions ^[2].

Why does the theme keep returning? The article suggests fashion and astrology share cyclical patterns, personalization and a vocabulary for expressing individuality ^[2]. Both promise that a person can be read from a few signals, and both sell the pleasure of recognizing yourself in a pattern. That shared logic is the best explanation for why a motif from a 1938 jacket can still feel current.

From couture to the everyday

The theme did not stay at the top. Coveteur’s survey of the trend lists Versace in 2016, Vetements in 2017, Tommy Hilfiger x Zendaya in 2019, Zimmermann in 2022 and Gucci in 2023 as collections that used zodiac symbolism ^[2]. Different decades, different budgets, the same logic: the sky is a shared vocabulary, so a garment that speaks it is understood immediately.

What changes from era to era is the execution. Schiaparelli’s version was hand-embroidered and strange. A streetwear version is a clean glyph on a heavyweight tee. Both work for the same reason, which is that nobody needs the symbol explained.

Questions readers ask

Who made the first famous zodiac fashion collection?

Elsa Schiaparelli’s Fall/Winter 1938-39 Astrological collection, with its embroidered Zodiac jacket, is widely cited as the landmark ^[1].

Has the Zodiac jacket been remade?

Yes. Schiaparelli revived it in 2017 for the house’s 90th anniversary, using the original 1938 embroidery sample ^[1].