How do you follow the best show of the SS26 season? Matthieu Blazy achieved the impossible last night, exactly two months after his Chanel debut, with 30 minutes of magic in New York. If his Paris presentation breathed new life into the world’s most famous fashion house, last night felt like the 41-year-old designer—just the fourth in its history—blew the entire roof off.
Related article: For Fall/Winter 2025, Chanel Revisits Its Most Iconic Codes
What Blazy showed in New York was Métiers d’Art (MDA), an annual ready-to-wear collection created to highlight the astonishing craftsmanship of Chanel’s ateliers—a love letter to creativity, if you like.
It isn’t couture—Blazy will present that in Paris next month—but it’s almost as exquisite. Chanel’s gravity is largely based on this kind of exceptional artistry and so the MDA show is usually big on beautiful but very grown-up clothes, elaborately embellished and decorated, shown in equally grand locations. When Karl Lagerfeld brought MDA to NYC in 2018, he took over the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Instead of the Upper East Side, Blazy went to the Lower East Side and the disused Bowery subway station. There was some fun to be had watching the clients—still clad in the old double CC pearls and chains uniform until Blazy’s SS26 collection hits stores in March—getting to grips with the public transit system.
Related article: Chanel Cruises Into Singapore With Glamour And Plenty Of Star Power
"I was interested in the New York subway because I think it’s the one and only city in the world where every part of society has to use it," Blazy said backstage (well, up the far end of the platform, to be precise). "I also liked the idea of doing a show where nothing is linear anymore. I wanted to create a kind of happy chaos, what you see every morning when you go to work—you don’t know what’s going to be at the corner or who you are going to meet, everyone’s invited." When the downtown Chanel express finally rolled in, bringing 80 models with it, there were audible gasps. The surprise and excitement didn’t diminish during the next 30 minutes.
Despite the elaborate staging and the stellar front row—Meg Ryan, Martin Scorsese, Sofia Coppola, Kristen Stewart, Ayo Edebiri, Margaret Qualley, A$AP Rocky—the clothes outshone it all. Blazy is offering a new blueprint for modern dressing, full of spirit and attitude. Every model embodied a different character—and there’s a Chanel for them all, whether heading to the office in baggy denim and a masculine blazer or returning home in a fabulously feathered evening skirt. Who doesn’t want an animal print two-piece suit or an embellished dress layered over a T-shirt and jeans or a leopard chain strap bag or silver glitter flapper shoes or… You get the idea. This was a playful, cinematic world with larger-than-life clothes which would translate perfectly to the real world.
Related article: The Runway Rundown: Chanel Plays With Proportions
It's hard to believe that Blazy has so utterly transformed Chanel with just two shows. The most exciting thing is to imagine what he’ll do next.
This article was first seen in ELLE UK.