News feed
Following triumphant ready-to-wear and Métiers d’Art debuts, Matthieu Blazy faced a fresh challenge with his first haute couture collection—not only as Chanel’s new creative director, but ever. But under a whimsical canopy of towering mushroom caps and pink weeping willows, the designer once again exceeded the hype, presenting an enchanting Spring/Summer 2026 Haute Couture show that will live on in our minds.
“Haute Couture is the very soul of Chanel,” Blazy wrote in the shownotes. “These are clothes that are as much about the wearer as the designer.” That idea—of clothing as a kind of shared authorship—guided the collection from its opening look: a Chanel suit rendered in sheer silk mousseline, pared back to its essential lines and washed in tender hues. Appearing almost like a memory of a garment that was at once bare and rich with history.
From this distinct silhouette, the simple question Blazy posited was clear: what makes Chanel, Chanel? His answer lay not in overt references, but in emotional architecture. Tokens of intimacy, including a handwritten love letter, a vial of N°5, and a flash of red lipstick, were embroidered, suspended or hidden inside garments. Pockets became repositories of personal history, while chains revealed what is usually concealed. Couture, here, was not just worn but inhabited and given meaning through wear.
As the collection unfolded, a transformation took place. Models became birds—symbolically, texturally, sometimes almost literally. Raven-black tailoring showcased the precision of the tailleur atelier, while flou techniques softened silhouettes into flight-ready forms. Suggestions of feathers were conjured through pleating, weaving and embroidery developed with the artisans of le19M. The avian cast ranged from pigeons to spoonbills, herons to cockatoos, each realised with distinct character.
While we’ve come to expect performance during this week, for Blazy, couture is not about spectacle for its own sake. “It’s the clothes worn that give them a true story,” he noted. In this debut, Chanel’s codes were neither mummified nor rewritten, but allowed to breathe, morph and migrate. His first Chanel bride may have been the best example for this; dressed in a feathery pailette two-piece shirt and skirt set that moved with a kind of modern magic one can’t quite believe was crafted by hand—the very crux of a good couture collection, we’d say.
