Chanel is all about pleasure as Blazy celebrates yr at helm of planet’s hottest model | Chanel

“It’s begin,” Matthieu Blazy stated after a Paris present that marked a yr of his tenure as inventive director at Chanel. “I’m pleased with the place we’re at.”

Chanel now holds the highest spot within the Lyst index of the planet’s hottest manufacturers, which tracks demand and engagement throughout search and social media. The privately held firm publicizes official monetary outcomes solely yearly, however figures reported by Bloomberg confirmed 16% development within the first half of 2026. In Vanity Fair’s list of the planet’s 50 strongest individuals, printed this month, Blazy is the one clothier to make the lower. People who don’t a lot care about style have observed him; individuals who do care about style speak about him continuous.

Blazy’s Chanel is about pleasure. Smiley and chatty in individual, he enthuses about his crew and the ladies he attire, presenting a pleasant face of Chanel that contrasts with Karl Lagerfeld’s legendary acid tongue and Coco’s managed brutalist stylish. He talks about his job like a baby in a sweet retailer, not a tortured artist: he received the thought for this stage set, a flock of 95 big white birds suspended from the domed metal and glass ceiling of the Grand Palais in Paris, whereas on vacation in southern Italy along with his accomplice, watching migrating birds fly above the Crati River.

One of Chanel’s most well-known adverts of the Nineties featured Vanessa Paradis in a birdcage; now, Chanel’s birds fly free. For the soundtrack of the present Blazy had requested Nicole Kidman to learn a passage “about time, about freedom” from Virginia Woolf’s To The Lighthouse, which he had learn on that Italian vacation. Fashion was “ladies’s home made treatment for the darkish occasions”, he stated.

After a number of years when the decaffeinated aesthetic of quiet luxurious dominated style, the brand new Chanel shouts with cereal-aisle colors. A purple and white embroidered jacket with a jade and turquoise skirt, plus bag and boots in navy and gold. The iconic two-tone pumps, however in zebra stripes and yellow polka dots as an alternative of the normal camel and black.

The similar mannequin opened and closed the present carrying Gabrielle Chanel’s very personal 2.55 purse. “Gabrielle truly had only a few baggage in her personal life, which is one thing I discover fairly lovely. So this bag isn’t damaged, however it has a beautiful patina,” Blazy stated.

On his moodboard had been images of the founder he had discovered within the archive: Gabrielle as a baby; with Gigot, her beloved nice dane; on a ship; driving a horse; in a Harlequin fancy gown costume; smiling in a daring leopard-print coat and matching hat. “It is a aspect of Chanel that isn’t identified: her humorous aspect, her joyful aspect. I see ladies as a juxtaposition of so many selves, and Chanel had this unimaginable layering inside herself.”

The well-known soft-shouldered Chanel go well with got here worn with nothing beneath, “like fragrance” (Blazy, a scholar of Cocology, is not going to have missed the allusion to what Marilyn Monroe famously stated she wore in mattress: Chanel No 5). “I like the concept whenever you put on it straight on the pores and skin, it makes a fetish of the go well with. A bit of punk Chanel,” he stated. A yr of material innovation was behind the most recent variations of the go well with, a smocked silk on an elasticated membrane, which “is my reply to what sporty might imply at Chanel”, Blazy stated.