Chanel AW26
Gallery / 23 images
If you hadn’t heard already, people are going mad for Matthieu Blazy’s Chanel. Don’t believe us? Just look at the multiple media outlets reporting on the pandemonium at the boutiques, as well-to-do fashion ladies snap up cardis and mules from Blazy’s critically-acclaimed debut. The collection only dropped in stores on March 5, yet the label’s Rue Cambon location in Paris is officially “ran through”, according to Gabriella Karefa-Johnson’s Substack. “It feels like grainy footage from Best Buy in the 90s when flat-screen TVs first dropped on Black Friday,” wrote the stylist on her page. Elsewhere, the editor Bryanboy wrote on Instagram that there were “lots of tears” from the “hundreds, if not thousands, of people” who flooded the city’s Chanel stores at the weekend, only to be met with empty shelves.
While the mania could be an indictment of some fashion people’s questionable stability, the events are actually cold, hard evidence that Blazy has ushered in a new era at Chanel. The French maison is back from quietly ticking over, and reclaiming its position as the most coveted brand in the world. Blazy already followed up that September debut with two (!) more beloved shows – Métiers d’Art in December and couture in January – and now he returns for his sophomore ready-to-wear collection. Like the Chanel store on Rue Cambon, the Grand Palais has seen its fair share of pandemonium, especially when there’s a Chanel show in town. For all the stars, style and 00s throwback tracks from last night, scroll down for everything that happened at the AW26 show.
Blazy has taken us to space, to the New York subway, to a mushroom patch, and now to a building site. Towering true-to-size cranes lined the runway, glowing in bright red, yellow, green and blue. It might have been a less glamorous set-up than we’re used to from Chanel, but it was impressive all the same. The runway itself was lit up to look like a brick road – but not a yellow one, a faint rainbow brick road instead. The construction site could be seen as symbolic for Blazy, who laid his foundations last season, and continues to build on his vision for Chanel with every collection.
Last season, Blazy’s front row was filled with current and former Chanel house ambassadors like Vanessa Paradis, Nicole Kidman, Margot Robbie and Ayo Edebiri. Robbie returned for AW26 (along with a brand new bob), and was also joined by Paradis’ daughter Lily-Rose Depp (who became the youngest-ever face of the brand at age 16), as well as Teyana Taylor, Olivia Dean and Kylie Minogue. Elsewhere, French pop star Angèle took her seat in a pair of huge frames that all but obscured her identity, Francesca Scorsese arrived in a double-breasted black trench coat, while Oprah made a rare fashion show appearance in head-to-toe new season.
Of the four collections that Blazy has shown at Chanel, this one felt the most mature. Like at couture in January, 49-year-old model Stephanie Cavalli opened the show, this time wearing a pleated black zip-up and matching skirt. Unlike a lot of this season’s shows, Chanel made it clear that this was an Autumn/Winter collection with a series of chunky coats, blazers and takes on the classic tweed suit. Cropped worker jackets riffed on the construction site setting, brightly dyed faux fur completely encased one model, while newly announced ambassador Bhavitha Mandava wore a longline zip-up cardigan, the spiritual sister to the camel quarter-zip she wore to open Métiers d’Art.
One of Blazy’s key inspirations was an interview that Gabrielle Chanel gave to Le Figaro in the 1950s. In it, Chanel describes fashion as being “both caterpillar and butterfly. Be a caterpillar by day, and a butterfly by night. We need dresses that crawl and dresses that fly. Because the butterfly doesn’t go to the market. And the caterpillar doesn’t go to the ball.” This was reflected on the runway with pared-back, neutral daywear, contrasted by vibrant and unapologetic evening gowns. While models like Anok Yai, Awar Odhiang and show closer Anne V wore both tonal and all-black looks, other models arrived on the catwalk in fluid, iridescent fabrics, their hair slicked back by vibrant streaks of glitter. As the show notes put it, a “dialogue between the real and the artificial” runs throughout the collection.
Blazy took dropped waistlines to new lows with this show – in some cases, with belts reaching the knees. It’s a silhouette we first saw 100 years ago with flappers during the 1920s, who deliberately dropped their waistlines and wore short, loose-fitting dresses so they were able to dance (throwing restrictive corsetry out the window). Blazy’s entire collection was primed for movement; none of it was form-fitting. What’s more, while the models walked, Lady Gaga’s “Just Dance” was remixed with a speech from one of the greatest dance films of all time, Billy Elliot. Clearly, Blazy likes to boogie.
