Photo Credits: Reproduction
On the evening of October 6, 2025, the Grand Palais Éphémère transformed into a luminous universe, witnessing Matthieu Blazy’s inaugural vision as artistic director of Chanel. The Spring/Summer 2026 collection emerged not merely as clothing, but as a meditation on time, memory, and identity — on the dialogue between past and present, and how ready-to-wear, even in its functional immediacy, can become a vehicle for introspection and narrative. Each silhouette, each texture, each movement carried its own story, a tension between expectation and the unforeseen.
Photo Credits: Reproduction
Blazy began with a structured gray suit, evoking Gabrielle Chanel’s audacious interplay of masculinity and femininity, yet he did not linger in rigidity. Tweed, reinterpreted in light, flowing shapes, midi skirts, and elongated dresses, became a material of liberation: fringes that sway, embroidery that whispers, camellias folded and reshaped into symbols of a tradition continuously reinvented. The familiar is made new, the iconic becomes visual poetry, a reminder that every garment is also a gesture, a silent affirmation of both wearer and creator.
Photo Credits: Isidore Montag
Accessories, far from mere embellishment, extend the narrative itself. Bicolored shoes are transformed into architectural statements; oversized camellias and structured bags defy expectation, inviting the eye to linger, to sense the space a garment occupies within both body and time. Blazy envisions a Chanel woman who is at once grounded and tender, who carries history without being confined by it, who asserts herself in the world without relinquishing wonder.
SS26 speaks of fluidity, transformation, and presence. Every fabric, every fold, every detail articulates a tension between the visible and the invisible, between the momentary and the continuous. Blazy demonstrates that ready-to-wear can be as reflective as haute couture: capable of expressing sensitivity, audacity, and identity, and transforming the everyday into a field of aesthetic and emotional experience.
Chanel SS26 reminds us that clothing is never mere protection or ornamentation; it is language. Language that communicates personal and collective history, that reveals the nuances of strength and fragility, permanence and change, memory and hope. In every piece, Blazy transforms the wearable into narrative, tradition into dialogue, and the quotidian into poetry.
Photo Credits: Armando Grillo
