Matthieu Blazy’s sophomore Chanel assortment is made for ‘girls to be unapologetically who they’re’

A lot of the idle chatter this Paris Vogue Week has revolved not round runway exhibits, nor the same old conjecture about which artistic administrators are in (or out). Folks aren’t even speaking about final evening’s events, or how little sleep they’ve had.

As a substitute, the query is: have you ever been to the Chanel retailer on Rue Cambon but? Or, the concession in Le Bon Marché? If in case you have, what did you purchase? (And typically: do they nonetheless have my measurement?). As a result of it was there, on Thursday (5 March 2026), that the primary arrivals from Matthieu Blazy’s debut assortment, introduced final October, started to hit cabinets. Such has been the furore, Vogue Enterprise and The New York Instances have reported on the phenomenon (within the latter, one interviewee likened the temper on the store flooring to The Starvation Video games); by Sunday, items had been already turning up on the entrance row.

Chanel A/W 2026: ‘The caterpillar and the butterfly’

So, when it got here to Blazy’s sophomore runway present for Chanel, introduced on the Grand Palais this night (9 March), it was possible that the 1000 or so company had been already making their buying lists (all of the extra in order a lot of the runway present’s seats had been taken up by Very Vital Prospects – i.e. those that spend probably the most in retailer in a given yr). And there was definitely a lot to want right here: a style pick-and-mix of gleaming metallic court docket footwear and sock-like two-tone boots; Chanel tweeds recut within the proportions of an outsized lumberjack shirt or in shimmering tinsel-like material; alongside the best of black jersey attire, just like the one which closed the present (jersey was one of many materials that Gabrielle ‘Coco’ Chanel pioneered, favoured for its ease of line and lack of constriction).

There have been additionally squidgy crescent-shaped purses paying homage to croissants; dropped-waist attire and skirts that recalled the liberated gown codes of the Nineteen Twenties (one other silhouette favoured by Coco Chanel for its ease); and an exciting closing act, the place a stream of colour-saturated seems – some in chequered chainmail – had been adorned with appliqué flowers, lace and beads. They had been worn by fashions whose hair was pastel-coloured or slicked again and given a gleaming metallic sheen. As one seatmate remarked, wistfully: ‘I need to be that lady’.

It will get to the guts of Blazy’s success on the home to this point: a capability to stoke want not simply by a well-designed pump or purse, however by extra heartfelt expressions of pleasure and awe (he conjured an identical emotional response at Bottega Veneta, the place he was artistic director previous to Chanel). It was evident from that first runway present, the place a grinning Awar Odhiang twirled alongside the runway in a gown of blooming organza ‘feathers’ to shut the present (‘I used to be floating on high of the moon,’ she instructed American Vogue of the impromptu finale); or an equally smiley Bhavitha Mandava (now a Chanel ambassador) closing Blazy’s first couture present in a bridal look adorned with lots of of mother-of-pearl paillettes. The latter present was populated with fantastical Munchkin-Land-like mushrooms and toadstools; the previous with an unlimited simulacrum of the photo voltaic system, hanging from the Grand Palais’ vaulted glass ceiling.

This night, soundtracked by a remix of Woman Gaga’s Simply Dance by Michel Gaubert, the present segued between day and evening, or, as Blazy described – evoking the phrases of Coco Chanel herself – the ‘caterpillar and the butterfly’. In in search of this metamorphosis over a given day, what was placing was the gathering’s depth: 78 seems, every richly layered and accessorised, spanning the quotidian and the extraordinary (it felt nearly unattainable that this assortment had been created in just some brief months). One may think about these seems being pulled aside and blended with an present wardrobe; equally, there was a seductive enchantment to the concept of sporting top-to-toe Chanel.

Blazy mentioned it was an ode to Coco Chanel, who was a grasp of the multiplicities of ladies’s lives: her clothes straddled each glamour and performance, a dichotomy which continues to run by the guts of the home of Chanel at this time. ‘Vogue is each caterpillar and butterfly. Be a caterpillar by day and a butterfly by evening,’ she as soon as mentioned, in a quote reprinted within the assortment notes. ‘There may be nothing extra snug than a caterpillar and nothing extra made for love than a butterfly. We want attire that crawl and attire that fly. The butterfly doesn’t go to the market, and the caterpillar doesn’t go to the ball.’