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Amid the great fashion reset of 2025 – which saw 16 major Maisons farewell their respective creative directors and subsequently welcome new ones – couture in Paris at the start of 2026 was always going to deliver a definitive answer. With this entire rearrangement, there were a number of highly anticipated debuts, but there was one we were all waiting for: Matthieu Blazy’s debut for Chanel Haute Couture.
Following a widely acclaimed ready-to-wear debut in October 2025, swiftly succeeded by a headline-making Métiers d’Art show in New York City, it’s safe to say Blazy had set the bar high for his Chanel Haute Couture debut.
So, for his first-ever haute couture collection – not just at Chanel, but in his career – what exactly was Blazy’s starting point? A question disarmingly simple: What makes Chanel, Chanel?
“Haute couture is the very soul of Chanel – it is the foundation and the full expression of the house,” Blazy himself explained in the show notes. “These are clothes that are as much about the wearer as the designer.
“It’s the clothes worn that give them a true story; their own story and an emotional resonance, giving women a canvas to tell their own story.”
Doing exactly that, and rather than pulling the codes apart, he reduced them to their emotional structure. Case in point: the opening look, which was a suit in sheer silk mousseline, which was followed by a variety of looks that set the tone for a collection which was less concerned with display and more of an allowance for the clothes to breathe. The French-seamed fabric in question was also used to craft iterations of the Chanel 2.55 bag, as well as a pair of trompe l’oeil ‘denim’ jeans and a white tank.
It was this anonymous haiku – Bird on a mushroom / I saw the beauty at once / Then gone, flown away – that served as the central inspiration for Blazy’s inaugural collection, not just in the pieces themselves but also to take flight at the Grand Palais. The set itself was like something out of a Disney movie (very much reminiscent of Alice in Wonderland), complete with towering toadstool mushrooms and weeping willows.
But what stood out the most, if you looked beyond what was right in front of you, was the discipline behind the entire collection, showcasing that the most powerful gesture is often the lightest one. In fact, it was among Blazy’s extensive research into the archives and into Gabrielle ‘Coco’ Chanel herself, where he discovered she was the first to use the mousseline as a fabric in its own right.
In a year defined by dramatic change, Blazy offered something slightly off-piste: a recalibration and a compelling case for continuity. Nowhere was this clearer than in the Chanel suit – still unmistakably the Chanel suit, yet loosened into something fluid, responsive, capable of moving with the woman who wears it, exactly as couture intends.
So yes, it was another debut in a year of debuts. But when the noise settles, what remains is the soul of the house, which, from the outset, was precisely Blazy’s point.
PHOTOGRAPHY: ÀLVARO GRACIA
FASHION STYLIST: ENOL BLASCO
HAIR: CARLA CIRUJEDA
MAKEUP: RAFFAELLE ROMAGNOLI
MANICURE: NAFISSA DJABI / B-AGENCY
EXECUTIVE PRODUCER: STEFF HAWKER
CASTING DIRECTOR: JEAN-MARC MONDELET
FASHION ASSISTANT: JULIETA MOREIRA
LIGHTING ASSISTANTS: ALESSANDRO FERRAIOLI & MATEI FOCSENEANU
MODEL: ATETA / SELECT MODEL MANAGEMENT
WORDS: OLIVIA MORRIS
“i’M LIKE A BIRD” IS PUBLISHED IN THE 17th EDITION OF GRAZIA middle east. ORDER YOUR COPY HERE.
