The wait is over: Matthieu Blazy is Chanel’s new inventive director

Matthieu Blazy has been appointed as Chanel’s new inventive director. ‘I’m thrilled and honoured to hitch the fantastic Home of Chanel. I look ahead to assembly all of the groups and scripting this new chapter collectively,’ he mentioned in an announcement issued this night.

Because the departure of Virginie Viard from the home this previous June – Viard had labored on the home for 3 many years because the departure of Karl Lagerfeld in 2019 – rumours have swirled by way of the vaunted halls of Paris’ nice homes as to who would develop into her successor. (There have been rumoured sightings of designers on the Chanel workplaces, some purportedly high-profile job interviews, and near-endless conjecture and chatter from the entrance row).

Matthieu Blazy is is Chanel’s new inventive director

However the noise is now quieted. Blazy, exiting Italian home Bottega Veneta, will develop into the most recent inventive director of Chanel, arguably style’s greatest job (at the least, if Lagerfeld was something to go by, the very best profile). Introduced within the wake of Chanel’s Métiers d’artwork present in Hangzhou, China, Blazy’s appointment shall be quick, together with his first present going down subsequent February throughout Paris Vogue Week. He’ll oversee ready-to-wear, equipment and high fashion and design the home’s Cruise and Métiers d’artwork assortment.

Blazy was born in Paris in 1984, earlier than shifting to Belgium to review style as the distinguished La Cambre college in Brussels (different notable alumni embody Saint Laurent’s Anthony Vaccarello, Rabanne’s Julien Dossena and Courrèges’ Nicolas Di Felice). An business stalwart, he went on to work at Raf Simons as males’s designer, at Maison Margiela overseeing the Artisanal line and girls’s ready-to-wear, and Celine, beneath Phoebe Philo.

Nonetheless, it was at Bottega Veneta – which he joined after briefly working once more with Simons when he turned inventive director at Calvin Klein in 2016 – that may thrust Blazy into the highlight. Working once more behind the scenes because the quantity two to Daniel Lee throughout the British designer’s transformative tenure on the home, in 2021, after Lee exited to go to Burberry, Blazy was appointed as inventive director.

His critically lauded and commercially profitable tenure on the home (in October 2023, it was the one home within the Kering roster to make a revenue within the conglomerate’s third quarter) has been outlined by a playful use of the home’s historic leather-based atelier. Notably, his first assortment featured a pair of blue denim ‘denims’ which have been truly trompe l’oeil leather-based; different such visible methods have featured all through his collections. Usually riffing on quotidien clothes in luxurious style, his collections have drawn inspiration from the costume codes of the Italian road (his opening trilogy).

His best success, although, is luggage: his Andiamo purse, which is crafted from the home’s intreccato woven leather-based with a looping golden clasp, has develop into ubiquitous. Different successes have included the Sardine bag (a reference to its metallic fish-shaped deal with), the Kalimero, and the roomy Hop bag. He has additionally cast robust hyperlinks with the design world – collaborators have included Gaetano Pesce, Flos and Cassina – whereas in October 2024 he launched his first perfume, encased in a dramatic Murano-glass bottle.