The invite for Matthieu Blazy’s debut Chanel show was a pendant shaped like a house, a little magnifying-glass window revealing only the coordinates of his first act. That’s it. No other clues on what was to follow, no Easter eggs on social media. You just had to wait and watch. The elusive Mr Blazy let the suspense build, a delightful cliffhanger in the age of instant gratification.
So when 500 fashion insiders gathered in Paris on the first Monday of October, there was only one question on everyone’s mind: after a month of dizzying musical chairs and high-stakes debuts across the world’s biggest houses, would Blazy’s first outing as Chanel’s new artistic director of fashion activities prove to be the season’s ‘save the best for last’ moment?
In a galaxy far, far away
The song and dance before the show was a prelude to the anticipation; it was like Paris was out to celebrate ‘Chanel Day’—traffic on Champs-Élysées at a standstill, a cheery crowd gathered outside to catch a glimpse of the stars (did someone tell them Pedro Pascal was on his way?), and a VIP crowd in their Chanel best. I spotted Natasha Poonawalla in the pearl necklace minaudière from the fall/winter 2025 collection, Indian house ambassador Ananya Panday in a navy knitted set (which she called “a very ‘come as you are’ vibe”), and even a Poodle on the front row.
The setting was the museum complex of Grand Palais. But not as you’d expect it. Blazy transformed its storied halls into a spacecraft to the future. Quite literally. Welcome to the Chanel cosmos, it seemed to whisper—the centre of a celestial spectacle with planets suspended from the ceiling orbiting this marquee moment, the super moon in the sky outside beaming down its blessings. The excitement was palpable—you had to be there. “For this first Chanel show, 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. We all observe the same sky, and I think it provokes the same emotions in us,” Blazy said on Instagram soon after the show.
The message was clear: Blazy is ushering in a new world. He may be in fashion’s most coveted chair, a baton loaded with legacy (and expectations), but the run to follow will be unmistakably his own. It’s what the brand expects of him too. “We didn’t choose Matthieu to just ‘do Chanel’, we chose him so he could push the boundaries of what Chanel is, for the future. He will bring his modernity, his way of working—Chanel is ready to let itself be transported,” Chanel’s fashion president Bruno Pavlovsky told the Business of Fashion last December.
And that’s exactly what Blazy delivered. The collection looked to the future while honouring the brand’s past, born from his deep dive into Gabrielle Chanel’s life. Photos of her in beau Arthur ‘Boy’ Capel’s classic button-down shirts from Charvet became a starting point. Blazy’s version: the same shirt (made in collaboration with the same French shirt-maker) reimagined with ‘Chanel’ embroidered in the same cursive used on their labels in the ’20s, casually paired with cascading skirts on the runway. Yes, the very same shirt Nicole Kidman wore to the show last night—with a simple pair of jeans. With that appearance, Kidman marked her return as a house ambassador, while Bear actor Ayo Edebiri became the first ambassador under Blazy, a symbolic merging of Chanel’s heritage with its new direction.
