Chanel Spring 2027
A year after Matthieu Blazy arrived at Chanel, the sense of uncertainty surrounding his appointment has largely disappeared. Returning to the Grand Palais for Spring 2027, he did so with a year's worth of work behind him and a house that increasingly feels like his own. Ninety-five birds hovered above the vast glass-and-steel space, while the collection itself looked backwards and forwards at once, distilling the codes Blazy has established since taking over and suggesting where he might take them next. His mood board was filled with images of Gabrielle Chanel, tracing her transformation from Edwardian dresser to someone borrowing her lovers' suits and eventually inventing the tweed suit that became one of fashion's defining garments. “She loved to play music,” Blazy noted, as well as costumes and the freedom of dressing differently. That sense of a woman containing multitudes became the central idea of the collection.
After a year of criticism around Blazy's deliberately boxy proportions, Spring 2027 offered considerably more variety. Clingy, semi-sheer knits appeared alongside pearl-embroidered corset tops and masculine black trousers, while his familiar cropped, wide jackets were joined by patchwork styles with corset-like ribbon trims, sloping-hem suiting and sleeveless hourglass gilets. There was room for minimalism too, in a crisp ivory coatdress traced with mismatched gold buttons, as well as more chaotic combinations of clashing patterns. Frothy tutu silhouettes, cloud-printed parachute dresses and sparkling night-sky motifs added a playful side that felt particularly connected to Blazy's reading of Chanel herself. The most convincing idea was perhaps the new Chanel suit, made from a stretch fabric engineered to resemble tweed while offering the comfort of sportswear. It was a clever response to the question of what a Chanel suit might mean now: not a rejection of its history, but an acknowledgement that women no longer dress as they did a century ago.
Everything came together in the show's quieter details. Dyanira Hurbuscher opened and closed carrying Gabrielle Chanel's original 2.55 handbag, creating a neat full-circle gesture, while Nicole Kidman, seated front row, contributed readings from Virginia Woolf's Orlando and To the Lighthouse. The set referenced the southern Italian village where Blazy spends his holidays, including a river that serves as a sanctuary for migrating birds, tying the suspended flock above the runway to his larger idea of freedom. For Blazy, that freedom also means making room for joy, beauty and poetry in a particularly dark moment. “Not just one woman, but the many women” who could belong to Chanel was the ambition. Spring 2027 suggested that the house no longer needs to choose between its past and its future. Blazy is beginning to make the two coexist.
