Matthieu Blazy made his grand entrance at Chanel – and what an arrival it was. Taking the closing slot of Paris Fashion Week at the Grand Palais, the French designer unveiled his long-awaited debut for the legendary house.
If he felt the weight of history – where does one begin reworking the codes of Gabrielle Chanel, Karl Lagerfeld and, more recently, Virginie Viard? - he didn’t show it. Instead, he channelled the house’s inherent cool and made it look effortless.
He opened with a boxy jacket and pleated trousers slung low on the hips, reimagining the classic Chanel tweed with rolled sleeves and a popped collar. A wrap skirt in boucle tweed followed, paired with a maroon red knitted cardigan.
By the seventh look, proportions had loosened – a black wrap skirt lined in white, worn with a long V-neck. Hands in pockets, the new Blazy Chanel woman felt modern and unhurried.
A sheer embroidered chiffon top came with a straight, dip-dyed skirt; a Prince of Wales check jacket met a frayed wrap skirt.
By the 12th look, silhouettes became more fluid – a bias-cut, asymmetric skirt teamed with an oversized jumper, half-tucked for real-world ease. This is Blazy’s signature – injecting clothes heavy with legacy with a sense of lived-in, wearable cool.
His technical mastery was clear in the play of texture and movement – a masculine pink shirt paired with a red asymmetric skirt, rippling like water.
That masculine-feminine dialogue returned in a cropped shirt worn with a vast, feather-covered skirt in the same vivid red – a bold, dramatic new direction for the house. Loose-knit skirts, dresses and tops with floral hems expanded Chanel’s vocabulary, signalling change without rebellion.
Even the house’s emblematic tweed suit made a late appearance – not until Look 38 – and when it did, it was looser, more relaxed, its structure softened for a new era.
In the audience, Nicole Kidman, Chanel’s newly named ambassador, arrived in a crisp white shirt and jeans – a look almost unimaginable in the previous years and a telling sign of the shift underway.
Blazy, one of the most respected designers of his generation, was brought in to breathe new life into a brand that aims to balance its storied past with its global reach.
Chanel is a cultural institution as much as a fashion house, and Blazy’s task is to make it feel relevant without losing its soul.
With this first Parisian salvo – filled with an unhurried, edgy chic, against which the work of the last designer Viard looks frumpy in comparison – Blazy has announced a daring, dazzling new direction.
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