Matthieu Blazy’s Chanel has taken social media by storm. Waspy “multi-hyphenates” slip their tuckered toes into Mary-Janes of cowhide, knowing that a steep price is a one-day ticket to intellectual gratification. 

There is a peculiar kind of pressure that comes with inheriting a legend. When codes are sacred, when the clients are orthodoxically loyal, and when the spirit of a certain “silver fox” lingers. And yet, since Matthieu Blazy stepped into the role of creative director of Chanel in late 2024, something unexpected occurred: fashion began to revel.

Clients who drifted away have re-emerged. Critics, so often braced for disappointment, lean forward in their seats. And buyers — the most reliable barometer of genuine excitement reach for their order books. The question worth exploring is not simply whether Blazy is good: It is why his Chanel feels so different from everything that came before it, and what exactly he has done that his predecessors could not, or would not dare to do.

@tcrfff Saturday 3/7 : Paris 31 Rue Cambon #chanel ♬ original sound – The Cutting Room Floor

A House Built on Codes

To understand what Blazy is doing, it helps to understand the weight he is carrying. Gabrielle (Coco) Chanel did not merely design clothes; rather, she loosened the corset. By introducing simplicity into fashion and establishing a visual language of tweed suits, quilted accessories, Camellia flowers, and little black dresses, it cemented what luxury looked like for a century. Followed by a long interregnum, then, in 1983, came the appointment of an “outsider”: Karl Lagerfeld.

Lagerfeld’s achievement is impossible to replicate. He took Chanel’s codes and amplified them through his own larger-than-life persona. Building the house’s identity around the reverie and nouveau ideologies of cultural symbolism. He reinvented constantly, but always within the house’s established vocabulary. 

When Lagerfeld passed in 2019, Chanel turned to Virginie Viard, Lagerfeld’s right hand and closest collaborator for decades. It was a logical, cautious choice. Viard knew the house better than almost anyone, but what followed, despite strong commercial performance, was a creative period that many in the industry found difficult to defend. The collections were safe, respectful, and technically accomplished. Yet abundant in commercial conservatism—codes preserved so perfectly they began to feel like artefacts rather than means of dressing.

Divergence

Blazy’s appointment in December 2024 was notable for several reasons. He became only the fourth official creative director in the 114-year-old house’s history — and the first external hire since Lagerfeld himself was appointed over four decades ago. His background is one of intellectual prowess, at the prestigious La Cambre school in Brussels, working under Raf Simons, Maison Margiela, and crucially at Celine under Phoebe Philo, before becoming creative director of Bottega Veneta in 2021. It is a pedigree defined not by spectacle but by rigour, by deep tenacity, and philosophical investment in craft, materiality, and what clothes actually do to the people who wear them.

as If It Were Our Last

Faced with the daunting task of his debut Chanel collection, he told Business of Fashion that he and his team were confronted with a choice: produce “a clean, modern, by the codes, by the book Chanel show,” or do something altogether more daring — to approach it, in his words, “as if it was our last.”

 He took the latter. The decision climbed through the industry.

The Spring-Summer 2026 collection that followed was masterful in movement. Edges were frayed and raw. Silhouettes softer, and overall less architectural than Chanel devotees might have expected. Even the bags seemed to relax. Scrunched, half-open, as though their contents were about to bounce off the sidewalk. Boucle jackets were lighter, proportions more relaxed. The Chanel codes had been untucked, de-stiffened, and made to feel as though they belonged to a woman rather than a mannequin.

@emmmaapproved brb going absolutely feral at chanel #chanel #matthieublazy ♬ original sound – emma hughes

@naraazizasmith back home we go!🤍 #travel #shopping ♬ Our Love Was Beautiful – Instrumental Version – Straight White Teeth

Dressing Real Women

Lagerfeld was a man of thespianism. His shows were theatre — elaborate presentations that used fashion as a vehicle for intellectual and cultural provocation. It was brilliant, and for decades it worked magnificently. But Blazy’s instincts run in a different direction. He is not dressing an idea. He is dressing a woman.

This distinction runs through to his philosophy of craft. In conversation with W Magazine, he articulated a view that cuts against the grain of contemporary consumerism:

“It’s not because it’s embroidered that it’s better,” he said. “It’s because the embroidery serves a purpose. Then suddenly, you can tell a story, you can create things that serve the mood.”

Let the richness of the fruit do the talking when the clothes themselves have nothing to say.

@taniasarin The chain that evens out the weight of the jacket is genius, every jacket needs this! #chanel #chaneljacket #fashiontiktok #designerfashion #matthieublaxychanel ♬ original sound – Tania Sarin Araradian

The simplest explanation for Blazy’s success is that he arrived with a coherent point of view. One that feels timely but not fearful of modernity. Rather than drag Gabrielle into the present. He is asking what Chanel means if you start from the woman, from the ground up, from the purpose of a garment rather than its decor.

Lagerfeld amplified Chanel’s codes through his own extraordinary persona. Viard preserved them, virtuously. But Blazy is doing something different, something intimately humanizing. In an era when luxury fashion faces mounting questions about its relevance, desirability, and what it actually means to invest in something beautiful. But that is precisely what people want to do. To invest in reverent beauty.