‘I simply wished to have enjoyable’: Matthieu Blazy makes a joyful Chanel debut

The invitation for Matthieu Blazy’s debut runway present for Chanel was a necklace: on it, a tiny silver allure formed like a home and engraved with Chanel’s double-C emblem. If you peered by its entrance window, the time and handle of the present had been there in minuscule letters – barely seen to the bare eye.

Chanel itself is a home, however a giant one. Its income in 2024 was near 19 billion {dollars}, and that in itself was a drop from the 12 months prior on account of market situations (the worth of the corporate is a number of billion {dollars} extra). Identified far past the closed circle of vogue, you won’t personal a Chanel jacket or a 2.55 purse, however you’ve possible worn its fragrance or make-up – you may need even taken its identify for a kid or a pet.

Matthieu Blazy exhibits his debut assortment for Chanel

Chanel can also be the home of Karl Lagerfeld – a towering determine who himself transcended vogue to turn out to be a family identify – and earlier than that, Gabrielle ‘Coco’ Chanel. Stripping away what Janet Flanner in a 1931 problem of the New Yorker known as the ‘gussets, garters, corsets, whalebones, plackets, false hair, and brassières’ of turn-of-the-century ladies’s gown, the French couturier would liberate the physique and stage a vogue revolution.

Add to this the burden of the strident on-line discourse which has surrounded the opposite debuts this vogue month – a short scroll on any main vogue journal’s Instagram feedback will provide you with an perception – and you’ll be forgiven for considering that Blazy’s job was near-insurmountable (final week, at Jonathan Anderson’s debut womenswear assortment for Dior, an Adam Curtis-directed brief movie previous the present intercut footage from the home’s earlier runway exhibits with clips from horror movies – a logo of the anxiousness taking up such a significant model can evoke).

However Blazy involves the home with loads of pedigree. Born in Paris (a plus, notably for the present’s French contingent), he arrives at Chanel from a critically lauded and commercially profitable, if comparatively temporary, stint at Bottega Veneta, the place he utilised the home’s leather-based atelier to create extraordinary sartorial illusions (a memorable pair of ‘denim’ denims had been truly trompe l’oeil leather-based). Earlier than that, he labored within the design groups for Raf Simons, Phoebe Philo’s Celine, Calvin Klein and Maison Margiela; on the latter, he reinvigorated the home’s Artisanal line after the eponymous designer’s departure. He grew to become referred to as one thing of a behind-the-scenes genius – a designer of mind and style. ‘Essentially the most well-known designer you’ve by no means heard of,’ New York journal deemed him in 2014.

However this night, he took his place on vogue’s fundamental stage: the Grand Palais, the longtime dwelling of Chanel’s runway exhibits, which for the event had been reworked right into a gleaming photo voltaic system in a gesture that recalled the bombastic shows of Lagerfeld. Hanging over an oil black flooring – its floor evoking the undulating constellations of outer house – the large glowing orbs had been chosen by Blazy to symbolize Gabrielle Chanel’s fascination with the evening sky. ‘I wished to do one thing fairly common, like a dream, one thing exterior of time,’ stated Blazy. Removed from that tiny steel home: this was his personal invitation to dream huge.

‘We will go two methods. Both we do a clear, fashionable, by the codes, by the ebook Chanel present, and it’s a primary step. Or we do that present as if it was our final,’ he instructed the Enterprise of Vogue in an interview launched to coincide with the beginning of the present. ‘I took the final choice. Let’s do a present as if it was the final one.’

Unfolding in three chapters – Un Paradox, Le Jour and ‘L’Universel – Blazy stated that the present started with the invention of Gabrielle Chanel’s love affair with the English polo participant Boy Capel, who Blazy known as her ‘most important different’. ‘It begins with a menswear custom,’ he stated of ‘Un Paradox’, honing in on the boys’s shirt and trousers – one thing he imagined being handed between Capel and his lover. Right here, the shirt was Charvet in a uncommon collaboration (although Gabrielle Chanel herself was a shopper of the Parisian shirtmaker), whereas tweed tailoring had a free, masculine line. The opening jacket was based mostly on certainly one of Blazy’s personal blazers: ‘I solely modified the buttons and added a sequence,’ he stated post-show.

The latter sections had been extra expressive: in ‘Le Jour’, he thought concerning the concept of a garment being handed by generations, like a 2.55 purse which appeared crushed and worn, or tweed jackets and skirts that had the phantasm of coming aside at their seams (‘the worn familiarity of the really stylish, gadgets really feel handed down and utilised’). In ‘L’Universel’, Blazy felt most at dwelling: a continuation of the vivid materiality of his time at Bottega Veneta got here in sheer attire that bloomed with appliqué flowers, a tweed two-set rendered in crochet, or Awar Odhiang’s closing robe, which descended right into a kaleidoscopic melange of feathers (he stated his workforce had nicknamed it the ‘Piña Colada’ gown). In a memorable second, the Ethiopia-born Canadian mannequin grinned and twirled on the finish of the finale, becoming a member of Blazy for his triumphant remaining bow.