If you needed any further evidence that Blazymania is real, look no further than fashion’s incredibly chic answer to Comic-Con—aka the Chanel show—where the doors to the Grand Palais open 45 minutes early so guests have ample time to capture content with the season’s fantastical set, dressed in their bouclé best. Last night, at Matthieu Blazy’s third ready-to-wear show for the house, there seemed to be nearly as many pairs of his colorful, high-vamp, two-tone pumps in the room as the 95 giant, illuminated geese suspended overhead. The red, white, and blue checked tweed jacket with its exuberant ruff from his Métiers d’Art show in New York was another fan favorite.
To a soundtrack full of bird songs, including Camille Saint-Saëns’s “The Swan” and the Cinematic Orchestra’s “Arrival of the Birds,” models traced a giant infinity symbol (which, if you think about it, is basically Chanel’s double-C logo with the apertures filled in). The spectacle beneath the glass-vaulted ceiling, where the moon from Blazy’s debut show made a return appearance, underscored the spring 2027 collection’s central idea: that great clothes are a means of taking flight, just as they were for “Gabrielle, who then became Chanel,” as Blazy put it in his show notes. Vestiges of the ornamental femininity she rebelled against surfaced in explosions of tulle, shadow boning, and cinching ties that hinted at bustles and corsetry.
Before launching her own label, Chanel designed lingerie. One of her earliest design revelations was to turn jersey, then used largely for men’s underwear, into loose, liberating dresses. Blazy brought the idea full circle with his opening look: a semi-sheer white slipdress revealing tonal briefs beneath. Her tailoring, too, took cues from the male wardrobe, including the jackets she borrowed from her polo-player boyfriend Boy Capel. Here, Blazy came closer than ever to actual Chanel menswear with a cutaway tailcoat styled over an unbuttoned waistcoat and, naturally, a Charvet shirt, beneath which a sheer knit tank and bra peeked through. Elsewhere, bouclé jackets were worn unbuttoned to reveal a triangle of bare skin, as the kids do these days, or refashioned in something called smocked tweed, a futuristic fabric with the airy give of sponge knit.
Chanel is, of course, an accessories powerhouse, and Blazy underscored this from the outset: Dyanira Hurbuscher opened and closed the show carrying the founder’s own 2.55 bag, borrowed for the evening from the Patrimoine archives. Elsewhere, he played with the house bag codes, from quilting and leather-woven chains to the CC turnlock. The classic flap came in primary colors, animal prints, cloud beading, and even a 3-D-printed iteration, but the real remix was in the shapes, like quilted bags with smooth leather handles and decorative watch chains, plus pebbled East-West styles with supersize CC turnlocks. The shoes were just as inventive, densely embroidered and embellished, with many set on curving Louis heels. By the time this season’s Millennial favorite, Britney Spears’s “Gimme More,” came on for the finale, it was clear Blazy already had already given lots to love.
