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The Chanel Little Black Jacket exhibition opened in London today at the Saatchi Gallery. It's an exciting time for fashion across the industry. It shows fashion can continue to be treated as art. In particular, the Black Jacket, Chanel's token and iconic piece, is an impressive showpiece.

The exhibition will feature 100 black and white photographs of Karl Lagerfeld's favourite muses wearing the label's iconic jacket. Both men and women will appear, from Kanye West to Vanessa Paradis.

In addition to celebrating its beauty, it also highlights the complete versatile glamour of the little black jacket.

New Look, the British high street's big trendsetters, is stocked with black ladies jackets that can become a staple and solid item for any stylish wardrobe.

Three standout black jackets are the Black Ponte PU Panel Cropped Jacket, the Black Ponte Peplum Crop Blazer and the Black Houndstooth Contrast Trim Blazer. All evoke the splendour and swagger of the Little Black Jacket's reputation and status within fashion's history.

For Chanel-like class, work the jacket with simple sophistication. A classic and crisp white shirt with skin-kissing black skinny jeans will create couture grandeur out of a sparse yet super-stylish outfit.

It is also vital to team the look with killer heels. For that couture kind of glamour, towering black boots, in suede and leather perfect the ensemble, creating precision, line and height.

It is true; no jacket is truly complete without this Work of Art. The black jacket, now a proven and iconic piece worth its own show, is a must-have piece; to dress up, down and with everything. It creates edge, class and cool, and those are things the fashion industry loves to exhibit.

We began the Myth of Macho by studying a few key issues such as modern iconography (Arnold Schwarzenegger) and social issues (Lethal Weapon). But what of a film that blends politics, masculinity and the extremely sensitive psychic space of the young adult male body? Within this week’s installment, we are going to look at the Male Body, and what that means in the context of war. To Stanley Kubrick, war was a brilliant and beautiful canvas upon which to explore many of his incisive meditations on the human condition and its relation to politics and authority. Full Metal Jacket (1987) is no exception. This film, however, presents us with a special case in that it was meticulously authored to center on youth circumstances and generational disparities.

Full Metal Jacket, in all its visual and narrative glory, creates a harsh and terrible landscape that brings this film closer to a coming-of-age-horror picture like Carrie (Brian De Palma, 1976) than a simple war picture about the Vietnam experience. In a sense, there is a certain underlying notion within the movie that war-is-men-is-youth-is-hell. While there are many themes in and around the film, it is the displayed modes of masculine behavior, performed feelings of physical insecurity and humiliation and the underlying genuine loss of self that create a filmic environment by which Full Metal Jacket becomes not simply a Kubrick film nor a war film, but a Kubrick-horror-war film.

It is no secret that war is terrifying, even moreso, the Vietnam War and all of its possibilities. But how might a filmmaker create an even harsher environment for the viewer? The answer: add the altogether far too terrifying landscape of the developing male body. While Full Metal Jacket is no Cronenbergian body horror flick, it most certainly calls upon us to look at some of the more real and non-negotiable issues that young men and women have to face: the development of self esteem and self-worth when it comes to their physical development and actual ability.

While De Palma may have predicated the adolescent-body-as-object-of-terror concept in a different manner, it’s not an accident that the first scene of Carrie White’s disintegration comes in a locker room: this is the preparation site for physical activity and performance. It is also the site of the greatest humiliation if your body does not work/look the way you want it to, on or off the “field.” Kubrick, on the other hand, decides to tackle the subject within the scope of boot camp, one of the most significant areas to test a young man’s mental, physical and psychological performance. Kubrick sets up Full Metal Jacket with some of the most difficult to endure and painful-to-watch sequences of a young man being psychologically destroyed and emotionally broken due to his still-developing corporeal form. This is not just enacted by his drill sergeant, but also by his peers. As a young person coming of age, being ripped apart by authority and “friends” due to size and ability is beyond devastating. These are all external assets that may or may not be able to be fully controlled and are, most certainly, not a choice: your body was given to you, without your own consultation, and if it is too tall, too small, too bulky, too clumsy… these things make growing into adulthood a great deal more difficult and confusing than those who, like the Baby Bear’s porridge, got something that was “just right.” Thusly, Vincent D’Onofrio’s character of Private Leonard “Gomer Pyle” Lawrence exists in this film as a young man who is quite literally trapped in his own skin; the body is his ultimate war zone.