Luxury group Chanel has acquired Charvet in a deal that will end 188 years of independent ownership at the renowned French shirtmaker.The sale to Chanel includes Charvet’s headquarters and store on Paris’s Place Vendôme. The financial terms of the deal, which will give Chanel greater exposure to male customers, were not disclosed.Founded by Joseph-Christophe Charvet in 1838, the Paris-based maison is the world’s first specialist shirt tailor. Charvet’s heirs sold the business in 1965 to their main fabric supplier, Denis Colban, whose son took on the business after his death in 1994.Discussions over a deal began when Matthieu Blazy, Chanel’s new creative director, collaborated with Charvet to produce monogrammed shirts for his debut runway collection last October.Chanel’s president of fashion, Bruno Pavlovsky, said the group was motivated to buy Charvet after the shirts proved a hit with clients and it became aware that the Colban family was open to selling.“They don’t have any internal or family successors [and] we had a super good feeling . . . so we have decided that the future of Charvet will be with Chanel,” Pavlovsky told the FT.Charvet has amassed an illustrious client list over the years, including Sir Winston Churchill, Charles de Gaulle and the founder of its new owner, Coco Chanel. More recent devotees include David Beckham and Sofia Coppola.Pavlovsky said Chanel and Charvet complement each other because Chanel is primarily a women’s brand with a growing number of male clients, whereas Charvet caters mainly to men but is growing its female client base.