BLAZY OF GLORY

The debut show of Chanel's new creative director, Matthieu Blazy, was both feverishly anticipated and rapturously received. Nathan Heller reports from inside the months-long preparations.

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Fashion cannot exist without change, but some changes reach beyond the season. When it was announced last year that Chanel was without a creative director, people across the industry looked to the house in nervous expectation. For nearly 40 years, Chanel had articulated the vision of one man: Karl Lagerfeld. After he died, in 2019, his longtime deputy Virginie Viard had carried on his style. Viard's departure last year opened one of the highest seats in fashion, but also raised the possibility that Chanel's taste could take a startling turn. Matthieu Blazy, a comparatively young designer who had distinguished himself doing surprising things with leather at Bottega Veneta, was not considered an obvious choice, and when he was announced as artistic director last December, he had the task not just of working his way out from a very long shadow, but of showing where, as a designer of largely unknown capacities, he might go. The future course of the house would come down to his October debut.

When the night of that first show arrives, the vaulted backstage of the Grand Palais, a Beaux Arts wonder on the banks of the Seine, shivers with preparation. The floor, covered in light gray felt, is taped off with a runway order. Models rush and loiter in robes and hair clips. Forty minutes before the showtime of 8 p.m., Blazy appears, looking tense and pale. “I’m a bit all over the place, to be honest—I’m going to have a cigarette,” he says, and rushes off again.