Today, we departed from the solar system and landed firmly in the world that Matthieu Blazy is building at Chanel. Instead of the planetary set that the new creative director constructed for his Spring/Summer debut last October, Paris’ Grand Palais was transformed into a darkened space illuminated by multi-colored cranes. Models emerged from a polished floor, construction sounds overlapping the tune of Cesária Evora’s Petit Pays as our first impressions of Blazy’s sophomore ready-to-wear collection began to form.
This season, Blazy was thinking about Gabrielle Chanel’s musings on butterflies, and the transformative qualities that lead to their existence. She once said: “There is nothing more comfortable than a caterpillar and nothing more made for love than a butterfly. We need dresses that crawl and dresses that fly.” Moved by this, Blazy’s intention for Fall/Winter 2026 was to tap into the dialogue and continue the conversation around Chanel’s ability to be both caterpillar and butterfly in the modern landscape.
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We witnessed this through the two polarities on the runway. First, a procession of classic Chanel suits in black and cream, then daywear in the form of houndstooth bombers and long-line, insouciant blazers with rolled sleeves; these were paired with dresses and faux skirts that gave Chanel’s classic drop-waist silhouette an entirely new meaning, with belts fastened halfway down the thigh and flippy, pleated skirts starting there and ending at the knee, reminiscent of the belted mini skirts at Miu Miu’s blockbuster Spring/Summer 2022 collection.
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Chanel’s key mantle has always been the suit—this is the central canvas of Gabrielle Chanel’s legacy—and Blazy makes a point of keeping this silhouette central to the codes of the house while offering reinvention at every turn. His suits were knitted, woven with silicone, lurex, and even adapted into iridescent glo-mesh in the evening portion of the collection. These are accompanied by watery lurex slip dresses trimmed with cotton candy lace, silk jerseys woven with tweed, scalloped sequin dresses that resembled fish scales as they caught the light in movement, and neatly-cut coats with great textured collars.
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Matthieu Blazy has always had a pension for trompe l'œil, but today he explores a more holistic approach to themes of reality and surreality. For instance, the classic flap bag: For his Spring/Summer 2026 debut, it was offered in gold and leather, crushed and battered and left open. For Haute Couture, it was gauzy and transparent, filled with sheer embroidered love notes poking out the top. This season, the flap doubles, creating an illusion of two bags in one. Blazy’s newer silhouette—the maxi flap bag in grained calfskin—was carried in new colors, while charming additions appear in the form of tiny gold eggs on chains and half-moon-shaped clutches. Shoes were also notably sexy this season: open toe mules ran alongside second-skin cap-toed boots and minimal, strappy slingbacks. This is the heart of Blazy’s interplay within the paradox of Chanel.
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“Chanel is a paradox. Chanel is function, Chanel is fiction. Chanel is sensible, Chanel is seductive. Chanel is day, Chanel is night," he says in the show notes. “It represents the freedom to choose between the caterpillar and the butterfly whenever you want. I wish to create a canvas for women to be unapologetically who they are and who they want to be.” There are few designers today who can execute and balance the integral codes of the house while consistently proposing a sense of innovation that feels both exciting and enduring. Matthieu Blazy is certainly one of them. This season he asks a simple question: Who will you be today? Caterpillar or butterfly? The beauty lies in the wearer's freedom to choose.
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