October 7, 2025 |
With a solar system set and a stellar collection, Matthieu Blazy brought a modernity and freshness to Chanel. He rejuvenated the 115 year-old house with a debut collection that drew from Coco Chanel’s personal style. Her habit of borrowing clothes from her lovers, Arthur ‘Boy’ Capel and the Duke of Westminster informed his inspired mix of masculine and feminine. “I was interested in the revolution she brought, and there was no way back. She decided for herself what she could be, and she could be both faces of the same coin.”
Look number one: a grey wool check trouser suit; its cropped masculine jacket came with all the Chanel detailing (the little weighted chain at the hem, gold buttons and the CC branding on the lining) but it was cut roomier on the shoulder than recent Chanel collections and also came with an interior pocket borrowed directly from men’s tailoring. Swinging in the models hand was a classic 2.55 quilted bag, squashed, distorted and hanging open as if it had been found worn-to-death in the back of a dowagers closet and dusted off for a new generation. Blazy said he wanted it to look like “something lived, something cherished.”
Blazy presented an all-new Chanel girl. Modern, dynamic, striding out in a flat shoe, or a blunt-toed chunky heeled pump, swinging an heirloom bag. She looked like a 21st century woman.
That mix of masculine and feminine was a running theme. Extravagant ball skirts bristling with fabric feathers were worn with silk tops cut as simply as a T-shirt or a man’s dress shirt (courtesy of a collaboration with Charvet they came with a weighted chain at the hem). The attitude was relaxed. The hem on a tweed skirt looked frayed. Closer inspection revealed it was intensely embroidered with strands of beads and inspired by Coco’s lover the Duke of Westminster, who would wear his tweeds until they fell apart.
The hand of the couture atelier was everywhere. Golden knits were embroidered with gold metal thread, a check jacket dissolved into check beads at the hem. There were golden wheatsheafs (a symbol of much for Coco) embroidered onto chiffon T-shirts and open-weave, grid-like skeleton tweed suits, light and transparent. These hand-worked details gave an intimate splendour to the collection. And it was the intimacy of Coco Chanel’s life that infused Blazy’s storytelling. One dress covered in floral embroidery was inspired by the story of Boy Capell sending Coco flowers on the hour every hour until her boutique looked like a florist. The footnote to this story: she hated flowers except the Camelia, which had no smell and has become one of the house’s most recognisable codes.
Blazy addressed the house’s signatures, his own way. The white camellia flower appeared in raffia on the hem of a black knit suit. His tweed jackets were light but richly textured and looked almost pixelated because the designer had zoomed in on old Chanel tweeds and recreated that macro effect with his new weave. A white coat and drop waist dress, had seams picked out with graphic black edging referencing the monochrome elegance of the house and its packaging. “The good thing with the codes of Chanel is that you can reduce them and they still look like Chanel,” he said. Chanel for today.
Photography courtesy of Chanel.
