Matthieu Blazy takes to the New York subway for his joyful sophomore Chanel show

In 1931, Gabrielle ‘Coco’ Chanel took a trip to America: the destination, Hollywood, where she was set to meet studio executive Samuel Goldwyn to discuss working with him to help dress the leading ladies of his movies (he hoped that her Parisian sensibility would attract more women into theatres). En route, she made a pit stop in New York, staying in the hotel Saint Pierre on the city’s Upper East Side, though it was during the second visit – on her journey home – that she ventured Downtown, to Union Square. There, in the discount store S Klein, she discovered knock-offs of her designs – far from offended, thousands of miles from home, it was evidence that her aesthetic had stuck.

Yesterday evening (2 December 2025) on the platform of the disused Bowery station on New York’s Lower East Side, Matthieu Blazy – the recently installed artistic director of the house – cited this moment as the starting point of his first Métiers d’Art show, a yearly collection which shows off the skills of the house’s various craft métiers (these span embroidery and featherwork to hats, shoemaking and jewellery, many of which are gathered in Le 19M facility in Aubervilliers, Paris). ‘When [Chanel] went back to New York, she went downtown and saw women who were not from the higher class who had adopted the Chanel style,’ the French-Belgian designer said after the show. ‘It was not Chanel, but it looked like Chanel. When she returned to Paris, suddenly she had energy again and continued to design.’

The collection itself seemed to hang in this balance, and got to the heart of Blazy’s mission at Chanel: how, with a house of such cultural heft, do you balance ideas of fantasy and reality? After all, this is what Gabrielle Chanel proved so adept: on the one hand, the couturier was synonymous with the echelons of Parisian style, her apartment-cum-atelier on Paris’ Rue de Cambon – the spiritual home of the house – a lavish assemblage of Chinese screens, gilded furniture and crystal chandeliers. On the other, she would revolutionise the way that women around the world dressed, releasing them from what Janet Flanner, in a 1931 issue of The New Yorker – the same year Gabrielle Chanel visited the United States – called the ‘gussets, garters, corsets, whalebones, plackets, false hair, and brassières’ of the century prior.

His debut, held earlier this year in Paris, tended towards the latter sense of freedom, not least in the scenography, which saw the Palais de Tokyo installed with a vast simulacrum of the galaxy. Last night’s show was an altogether more ‘real’ setting: a New York subway station, albeit cleaned up of the dirt and grime of the daily commute (it was not the first time a runway show had been held there; in 2019, Tom Ford hosted a show on the platform). The show began with a train pulling into the station, out of which his models strode or meandered along the platform, as if caught on their way to work – or, indeed, for the more dramatic looks, a party. Guests watching on included Margaret Qualley and A$AP Rocky, fresh from the show’s teaser, which saw the pair play New York lovers in a Michel Gondry-directed film that unfolds in a series of surreal scenes across the city (including on the subway).

‘The New York subway belongs to all. Everyone uses it: there are students and gamechangers; statesmen and teenagers,’ Blazy said in a statement distributed after the show. ‘It is a place full of enigmatic yet wonderful encounters, a clash of pop archetypes, where everyone has somewhere to go and each is unique in what they wear. Like in the movies, they are the heroes of their own stories.’

In this way, it reflected his opening trilogy of shows for Bottega Veneta, which the designer said were inspired by observing the daily rituals of the Italian street (Blazy was creative director of the house prior to his appointment for Chanel). Here, he struck a similar mood of eclecticism, hinging on a series of archetypal characters: ‘socialites and superheroes, teens and olds, working girls and showgirls, the ladies who lunch and mothers on the go’, he described, noting that inspirations spanned the 1920s to the 2020s. With it, a sense of play: a sweater with a double-C version of the Superman logo peaking out from beneath a pulled-open shirt; a tweed two-set in bold leopard print (the material was hand-woven by Lesage); ultra-lightweight ‘lingerie denim’ adorned with twisting constellations of beads (the ‘denim’ was actually illusory silk).

Other looks straddled moment of glamour – billowing hand-painted tulip skirts, feathered shoes and net hats, tailoring edged with shearling fur – and something more quotidien, like the opening look of a pair of simple denim jeans, a zip-up sweater and the house’s signature two-toned shoes. Throughout it all, odes to the intricacies of the various métiers: look closers and you could spot tiny beaded lady bugs, golden Gooosens jewellery evoking ice cubes and hummingbirds, while Massaro’s classic slingbacks – based on a design by Gabrielle Chanel herself – came in featherweight kidskin or shaved animal print shearling.

‘I just wanted to have fun... something beautiful and enjoyable – [that’s] what we have to propose in fashion,’ Blazy said after his joyful – and critically lauded – debut earlier this year. Here, with an astute sophomore collection, he found a similar feeling of levity – one which felt unencumbered by the weight of designing for a house like Chanel. ‘I like the idea of doing a show where nothing is linear. I wanted to create a kind of happenstance, what we see every morning when we go to work, and you don’t know what’s gonna be at the corner,’ he said. ‘It’s playful.’

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