On the ultimate day of Paris Style Week, the universe of Chanel expanded. Matthieu Blazy’s debut was an occasion of cosmic proportions, and so the brand new artistic director leaned into this, setting the runway proper among the many stars. Beneath the domed ceiling of a planetarium constructed contained in the Grand Palais, the Belgian designer unveiled his Spring/Summer time 2026 assortment as each a love letter and a reckoning: a dialog between himself and Gabrielle Chanel, between custom and the long run.
“Chanel is about love,” Blazy says in his shownotes. “The start of modernity in vogue comes from a love story.”
It started, fittingly, with a love story of garments. A crisp Charvet-style males’s shirt and trousers, plucked from Boy Capel’s wardrobe and reimagined for right now, set the tone of pragmatism meets romance. Masculine tailoring softened into raw-edged jackets, whereas tweeds have been pressed, frayed and stressed. Work met play, love met logic—the dualities that outlined Coco herself introduced ahead into now. Distinction wasn’t smashed collectively for influence, however masterfully layered to create one thing altogether new.
The gathering constructed on the momentum, embracing movement and reminiscence. Daywear felt lived-in and beloved, with a 2.55 hung crushed and worn over the shoulder, crumpled camellias tangled into knits, and tweeds undone on the seams. But from this ease got here class—a reminder that at Chanel, the undone is at all times deliberate. A drop-waist, sandy-hued tweed swimsuit gave option to silk robes rippling like water, whereas hand-painted florals blurred into abstraction.
Texture, and the sheer number of it, was Blazy’s secret weapon. Threads shimmered into grids, tweeds turned translucent, and metallic fringes—his signature from his time at Bottega Veneta—burst into skirts and jewelry, recalling the Home’s celestial connections. The finale gown, a easy white silk T-shirt above a cascade of technicolour fringe, was pure Blazy, and sung with pleasure for the craft and mischievous restraint.
That is Chanel reborn. Nonetheless sure by its everlasting codes, however unafraid to breathe and revolutionise the best way its fearless founder did over a century in the past. Blazy’s lady is not confined to the Parisienne muse; she is borderless, like a constellation of identities orbiting one shared concept of freedom of motion and magnificence. With the burden of vogue’s most definitive legacy on his shoulders, Blazy cast his personal path, and with it, a brand new compass for the instances the place fashion is as galactic as it’s grounded.
