&lsquo;Chanel is about love. The birth of Modernity in fashion comes from a love story. This is what I find most beautiful. It has no time or space; this is an idea of freedom. The freedom worn and won by Gabrielle Chanel.&rsquo; Matthieu Blazy

&lsquo;There is no time for cut-and-dried monotony. There is a time for work. And a time for love. That leaves no other time.&rsquo; Gabrielle Chanel

As Paris Fashion Week wrapped, Chanel ended the season with a sense of anticipation that felt rare. Matthieu Blazy&rsquo;s debut at the Grand Palais wasn&rsquo;t&nbsp;just another milestone but also&nbsp;a clear sign that change had arrived. Under a sky of suspended planets, he unveiled a collection that looked ahead while conveying effectively the identity of the French Maison.
In three chapters, Un Paradoxe, Le Jour, and L&rsquo;Universel, he went over the codes again with a neat harmony between accuracy and comfort. Boy Capel&rsquo;s closet and the early days of the brand&rsquo;s modernism were evoked by the opening ensemble, a dapper men&rsquo;s shirt paired with pants and weighted with a chain. This established a collection that revolved around contrasts: masculine and feminine, structured and fluid, familiar and unexpected.

UN PARADOXE

It begins with a menswear tradition: a shirt and trousers.They are joined by masculine-style suit jackets, cut, raw-edged, becoming Chanel proportions. Adopted and altered, British at heart, Chanel&rsquo;s tweeds are agile, pressed and purposeful. The paradox is in Gabrielle Chanel&rsquo;s feminine power, won through a wardrobe where the practical and pragmatic never surrender the seductive and striking.

LE JOUR

Chanel&rsquo;s daywear moves through time. Classics are deconstructed, yet are always in motion with the body. Clean, graphic lines in black and white echo Art Deco and the precision of Chanel packaging, sumptuously realised in fluid, knitted silks. While the motif of florals becomes more abstract, cascading and unfurling, hand-painted prints become petals themselves.

L'UNIVERSEL

The universal language of Chanel travels around the globe and into the future, ever expanding. An idea of the future from the past is found in the Chanel fundamentals: grids of tweed become hand-knotted knits and transparencies, the architecture of the Chanel suit laid bare; jewellery, so intrinsic to Chanel, is loaded and treasured, both real and ephemeral, with baroque pearls, glass planets and enamelled chains; footwear is found with a familiar contrasting toe-cap, with heels all perfectly realisable, to propel the wearer forward, securely into the future.

The CHANEL Spring Summer 2026 Show — CHANEL Shows

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The show itself had a lightness that complemented the outfits. It was set to &rsquo;90s songs like Rhythm Is a Dancer, which conveyed a sense of tranquillity. When Awar Odhiang strolled in a skirt of fluttering feathers, smiling as she went, it felt genuine rather than staged.
What made Blazy&rsquo;s first Chanel collection so effective was its clarity. He did not strive to shock or rewrite history. Instead, he probed what makes the brand enduring and found new ways to make it feel alive.&nbsp;There was discipline but also comfort. The end effect was attractive without stiffness, clothing made to be worn rather than displayed.
After a period of refinement, this felt like the beginning of something more curious&nbsp;and expressive. Blazy&rsquo;s Chanel isn&rsquo;t about reinvention for its own sake but rediscovering freedom &ndash; the kind Gabrielle Chanel built her name on.
Photos courtesy of CHANEL.

Chanel Spring/Summer 2026

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