Because of the man- and woman-hours, the many fittings, and the extravagant expense that goes into haute couture, designers often create with only great occasions in mind: weddings, world premieres, charity galas, etc. Matthieu Blazy’s instinct for his first Chanel haute couture collection was to do as Coco Chanel once did. She made “clothes for women to go to work, to go to a play, the cinema, whatever,” he said. Because of this, his Chanel couture seemed more relatable than much of what we’ve seen on the week’s runways, which in turn served to make the astounding craftwork more exquisite.
Though the Grand Palais’s magic mushrooms and pink weeping willows were every bit as cinematic and transporting as the sun and planets that lit up Chanel ready-to-wear in October, this collection’s elaborate embroideries will be best appreciated in tight close-up. Even better, in the hand, because they remained almost impossibly light.
At a preview, Blazy said he stumbled across an inspirational haiku about a bird and a mushroom. “I thought it was so beautiful, so short, and I was wondering, can I tell a story with those three lines?” The idea, given “what’s happening to the world, was to consider this collection almost as a break: something magical, something that makes you dream, something poetic, a calm moment of quietness, almost like a Sunday morning.”
The show opened with the familiar Chanel skirt suit, only transparent. It was cut from the finest blush pink mousseline, and finished with pink quartz “buttons” and a traditional hem chain that had been updated with small natural pearls; flitting birds danced up the sides of the jacket and skirt in place of the usual side seams. The most charming element? Clients will be invited to have personal embroideries added to their selections: it could be an initial, a Zodiac sign, or a heart like the first model out chose for the chest pocket of her jacket. Also significant: the transparent version of the classic 2.55 bag she carried, its only contents an embroidered love letter.
Blazy is fashion’s most hopeful romantic. Everywhere you looked there were more alluring, delicate details, from enamel magic forest creatures for buttons to fungi for shoe heels. And because birds were the organizing motif—avians of every stripe were pinned to boards in the Chanel studio—there were feathers both real and in representation. The latter could be seen on a dégradé velvet pajama set or in thin slices of mother of pearl embroidered all over the men’s oversize shirt and skirt worn by the bride.
“I was interested in birds, birds in general, because they are free, because they travel, because they come from every place. I thought it was a beautiful metaphor for women today,” Blazy said. A 1920s flapper dress that Coco Chanel herself would have recognized was an elaborate mishmash of different bird patterns embroidered on humble cotton; he described it as a cadavre exquis, the surrealists’ party game, only rendered by Chanel’s petites mains.
Equally, Blazy’s Chanel couture is a place a woman can go for a black tailleur whose armholes have been lowered so it feels as easy and comfortable to wear as a sweater, and a little black dress, a look that Blazy claimed as his favorite, describing it as “deadly simple,” and yet “everywhere there is a kind of tension that’s part of the construction.” Walking out of the candyland fantasia of the set into a steady gray Paris rain, the lasting impression was that the house of Chanel is in exceptionally good hands.
