This morning in Paris, skies were a moody grey, and rain showed no sign of abating. Walking across Pont Alexandre III towards the Grand Palais – where Matthieu Blazy would present his first haute couture collection for Chanel – tourist boats drifted past, empty of passengers, and the Eiffel Tower grumpily hid its summit behind a haze of fog.
Inside, it was a different story. There, under the Grand Palais’s enormous vaulted glass ceiling, Blazy had conjured a fairytale realm: one of candy-pink trees and enormous coloured mushrooms, which sprouted gleefully around a circular runway. Part Disney-esque fantasy (a teaser video showed cartoon birds and squirrels leaping around the house’s atelier), part Munchkinland, such was the brilliance of the scene that even the glowering skies above seemed to momentarily glow with sunshine.
It set the stage for another historic day. Yesterday, Jonathan Anderson showed his first couture collection for Dior at the Musée Rodin; today, it was Blazy’s turn to show his prowess in the medium. The French-Belgian designer said that for this debut, he was driven by the impulse to strip everything back, asking: ‘What makes Chanel, Chanel? What is the essence and essentialism of the house? How do you bare its soul?’
He settled on the communion between maker and wearer, something which is also at the heart of haute couture (when purchased, a garment is made by hand by the couture atelier to the exact contours of a client’s body). To symbolise this, he asked each model in the show to select something personal to be woven into their look. Some chose meaningful dates or guiding words; others lucky symbols, initials, or lines from poetry (embroidery was executed by Lesage, one of the house’s métiers d’art).
But to strip things back also meant reintroducing levity to Chanel, a house of such size and influence that steering a fresh course can be a challenge, and traditions weigh heavily. So Blazy sought physical lightness: the opening look was a Chanel skirt suit, not in its signature tweed but in featherweight silk mousseline, so lightweight it almost floated off the body. The fabric was also used to construct a pair of trompe l’oeil ‘denim’ jeans and a white vest, as well as versions of the 2.55 handbag (they too seemed to float on their chain-link handles).
Tactility and movement, hallmarks of his first two runway shows (the first in Paris; the second in New York), continued to come to the fore here. Blazy envisioned the haute couture atelier like a candy box. There was tweed which sprouted with plumes of feathers (Blazy said he sees the bird as the ultimate symbol of freedom); bouncing trails of streamers from the hems of skirts (they recalled his previous work at Bottega Veneta); and a multitude of embroidery, from blooming flowers to toadstools (more abstract were colourful collages of raw-edge organza). Up close, the work was truly extraordinary.
It culminated with the haute couture bride, though Blazy did away with laborious trains and veils. Instead, model Bhavitha Mandava – a house muse, and the first Indian model to open a Chanel show last December in New York – wore an oversized, collared shirt and a knee-length skirt, adorned with thousands of petal-like mother-of-pearl paillettes (on the back, if you looked closely, glimmered a crystal-and-pearl bird). Taking her lap around the runway, she flashed a gleeful smile to attendees. By the time a mash-up of Bittersweet Symphony and Wonderwall soundtracked the finale, it was impossible not to share her joy.
‘[I] consider this collection almost as a break,’ said Blazy. ‘Something magical, something that makes you dream, something poetic, a calm moment of quietness, almost like a Sunday morning.’
