It All Started with Love

Matthieu Blazy has ushered Chanel into a new era, delivering a fresh vision of the maison's iconic silhouettes and heritage in his eagerly anticipated Paris Fashion Week debut

- By Cathy Huang

After ten months of meticulous preparation, in October, Matthieu Blazy unveiled his debut collection as Chanel’s new artistic director of fashion activities, a position he took on last December. Blazy was already known for his avant-garde vision through his work at Raf Simons, Maison Margiela, Celine and Calvin Klein, and his tenure as creative director at Bottega Veneta from 2021 to 2024. Yet the long months of preparation were essential for him to study and interpret the century-long legacy established by Gabrielle Chanel.

Chanel’s spring-summer 2026 collection was unveiled at the newly reopened Grand Palais, the glass-vaulted exhibition space which had been under renovation for four years. Blazy transformed it into a celestial spectacle—a constellation of planets was suspended overhead, with mirrored reflections on the runway. “I wanted to do something quite universal, like a dream, something outside of time; and I was fascinated by the universe of stars, a theme so dear to the house,” Blazy said in a post on Chanel’s Instagram channel. “We all observe the same sky and I think it provokes the same emotions in us.”