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On the final day of Paris Fashion Week, the universe of Chanel expanded. Matthieu Blazy’s debut was an event of cosmic proportions, and so the new creative director leaned into this, setting the runway right among the stars. Beneath the domed ceiling of a planetarium built inside the Grand Palais, the Belgian designer unveiled his Spring/Summer 2026 collection as both a love letter and a reckoning: a conversation between himself and Gabrielle Chanel, between tradition and the future.
“Chanel is about love,” Blazy says in his shownotes. “The birth of modernity in fashion comes from a love story.”
It began, fittingly, with a love story of clothes. A crisp Charvet-style men’s shirt and trousers, plucked from Boy Capel’s wardrobe and reimagined for today, set the tone of pragmatism meets romance. Masculine tailoring softened into raw-edged jackets, while tweeds were pressed, frayed and restless. Work met play, love met logic—the dualities that defined Coco herself brought forward into now. Contrast wasn’t smashed together for impact, but masterfully layered to create something altogether new.
The collection built on the momentum, embracing motion and memory. Daywear felt lived-in and loved, with a 2.55 hung crushed and worn over the shoulder, crumpled camellias tangled into knits, and tweeds undone at the seams. Yet from this ease came elegance—a reminder that at Chanel, the undone is always deliberate. A drop-waist, sandy-hued tweed suit gave way to silk gowns rippling like water, while hand-painted florals blurred into abstraction.
Texture, and the sheer variety 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 jewellery, recalling the House’s celestial connections. The finale dress, a simple white silk T-shirt above a cascade of technicolour fringe, was pure Blazy, and sung with joy for the craft and mischievous restraint.
This is Chanel reborn. Still bound by its eternal codes, but unafraid to breathe and revolutionise the way its fearless founder did over a century ago. Blazy’s woman is no longer confined to the Parisienne muse; she is borderless, like a constellation of identities orbiting one shared idea of freedom of movement and style. With the weight of fashion’s most definitive legacy on his shoulders, Blazy forged his own path, and with it, a new compass for the times where style is as galactic as it is grounded.
