CHANEL SS26

Paris, Grand Palais. There’s a different light on the Chanel runway. With Matthieu Blazy’s debut, the house finds new scope, abandoning the rigidity of its patterns and embracing a more fluid, lively language, more in tune with the present.

For too long, whoever designed it has been chained—to that cage, to that pattern. The checked tweed, the gold buttons, the almost military symmetries: iconic symbols, but now habitual. Blazy doesn’t erase them, he transforms them. He lightens the shape, modifies the cuts, introduces a new fit and a chromatic freshness made of bright colors, large floral prints, and breathable materials. It’s a gentle revolution: Chanel doesn’t change its face, it changes its energy.

Blazy doesn’t destroy Chanel: he cleans it, breathes it, brings it back to life. His gesture is surgical yet poetic: he cuts, opens, deconstructs, and lets air in where for too long there was only severity. The suit, from armor, becomes gesture. The jacket is shortened, the shoulder is curved, the shirt loses its composure and rediscovers an imperfect, yet vibrant, femininity! It’s a silent, yet clear, revolution.

Volumes soften, silhouettes lengthen, skirts open in flowing pleats that follow the body, not constrict it. The palette abandons graphic composure to embrace a luminous chromatic vibration: burnt beiges, velvety burgundies, explosive reds, sand-like gold, and then white, in a thousand shades. Even the fabrics seem to breathe: fringed tweeds, natural linens, chiffon worked like vegetable leather, floral embroidery of unprecedented dimensions. A flora never before seen on a Chanel dress.

The runway featured a succession of separate jackets, asymmetrical skirts, lightweight knits with metallic threads, and flashy dresses that blended structure and freedom. The image of the Chanel woman shifted: less monument, more person. A woman who walks with her hands in her pockets, who doesn’t show off, who moves. She doesn’t pose, she lives.

Blazy isn’t afraid of contrast. Where once composure reigned, there is now life. Where once there was the silence of a museum, now the noise of the world can be heard. The message is clear: Chanel is no longer a museum, it is a living language. Every collection must speak the present, not the past. And Blazy, with this collection, has given voice to the future, blending classicism and instinct, rigor and surprise, as only the greats can.

The following looks are the ones that struck me the most. The others—though beautiful—didn’t move me. And in fashion, as in art, emotion remains the only metric that truly matters.

GALLERY