Matthieu Blazy returned to the Grand Palais on Monday night for Chanel’s Spring 2027 ready-to-wear show, one year after his debut at the house. The setting spoke before a single look appeared: 95 birds suspended in midflight above the runway, a nod to a river sanctuary for migrating birds in the southern Italian village where the designer spends his vacations.
The collection carried 83 looks and a thesis. Rather than one Chanel woman, Blazy said, he designs for many. “Since I started at Chanel a year ago, we’ve tried with the team and the atelier to expand on the idea of women, so not just one woman, but the many women that could enter or belong to the world of Chanel,” he said. A year into the job, the show read as a checkpoint on where the house is headed.
The Runway Lineup and a 2.55 Full-Circle Moment
Casting did much of the storytelling. Model Dyanira Hurbuscher opened and closed the show carrying Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel’s own 2.55 handbag from the archive, a symbolic handoff from founder to current era. That single prop framed the collection: heritage carried forward, not shelved.
Blazy built the lineup around Coco’s own life chapters, drawn partly from a conversation she once had with writer Louise de Vilmorin. “The child I once was is with me today,” Coco Chanel said in that exchange, a line Blazy said shaped his approach. On the runway it translated into Edwardian stiffness giving way to menswear borrowing, then to the tweed suit she made her own.
Key Looks: Softening Chanel Without Losing the Edge
Some Chanel loyalists have pushed back on Blazy’s boxy silhouettes, and this season he answered with curve. Clingy, semi-sheer knits appeared alongside a pearl-embroidered corset top worn with masculine black trousers. Jackets stayed wide and cropped in his signature cut, but arrived with patchwork and corset-inspired ribbon trims, sloping hems, and a zebra-patterned sleeveless gilet nipped at the waist.
The range stretched from minimal to maximal. A crisp ivory coatdress with mismatched gold buttons sat at one end; a top, skirt and boots in three clashing patterns at the other. Playfulness showed up in dancer silhouettes with frothy tutus and parachute dresses printed with clouds and night skies.
The biggest product news was fabric. Blazy introduced a next-generation Chanel suit in a newly developed stretch material that looks like tweed and moves like athleticwear. “Every design house is obsessed with the future, the sportswear. We all look at Nike,” he said.
Set, Soundtrack, and the House’s Direction
Nicole Kidman, a Chanel brand ambassador seated in the front row, voiced the soundtrack, reading from Virginia Woolf’s Orlando and To the Lighthouse. The show closed on Britney Spears’s “Gimme More,” a jolt that had guests dancing in their seats. Marion Cotillard called the music “old and new at the same time, super modern with old songs.”
Blazy framed that emotional register as deliberate. “There is a space for poetry, beauty, joy, and it’s a good remedy to the dark times,” he said. The freedom motif, birds overhead included, ties back to a house built on movement and independence.
For models and industry watchers, the takeaway is how a heritage house uses casting and staging to carry a story: one model bookending a show, an archival bag as a baton, a voiceover doing narrative work. Blazy’s own summary was short. “It’s a good start,” he said.
