“Fashion is both caterpillar and butterfly. Be a caterpillar by day and a butterfly by night. There is nothing more comfortable than a caterpillar and nothing more made for love than a butterfly. We need dresses that crawl and dresses that fly. The butterfly doesn’t go to the market, and the caterpillar doesn’t go to the ball.”
Gabrielle Chanel
“Chanel is a paradox. Chanel is function, Chanel is fiction. Chanel is sensible, Chanel is seductive. Chanel is day, Chanel is night. It represents the freedom to choose between the caterpillar and the butterfly whenever you want. I wish to create a canvas for women to be unapologetically who they are and who they want to be.”
Matthieu Blazy
From earthbound to transforming, then able to take flight. Gabrielle Chanel elevated the functional to high fashion—she changed its context. She began the revolution of reality in womenswear by borrowing from menswear and from those, like her, who had always worked. In so doing, she changed fashion forever. At the same time, she never forgot the seductive, high-flown enjoyment of the fictitious, of the transformative fashion moment. In turn, Matthieu Blazy, as Artistic Director of Fashion Activities, honours both in his ongoing conversation with Gabrielle Chanel.
The natural world metamorphosed is part of the essence of Chanel: from Gabrielle Chanel’s love of simplicity and intricacy of natural colours and materials, together with an essentialism in cut. To the hypernatural, iridescent extravagance of display, embellishment, fancy and flight. Both are touchstones, as are the women who sport such clothing in unapologetic self-expression.
The collection moves through time, with a stratification of silhouettes; layered yet lithe, untucked and insouciant, from the twenties to the thirties, the fifties to the sixties, to the twenties once more – where we are today. Central to these temporal shifts is the archetype of the Chanel suit.
The suit serves as the central canvas, ready to reflect whoever wears it. Boldly reimagined, it encompasses ribbed knits to classic tweeds and intricate fabrics woven with artificial fibres, lurex, and silicone alongside natural gauze. From the signature ‘work shirt’ in boucle-tweed and the masculine pressed-tweed blouson—both now integral to the new suiting language. By way of fluidity, lightness, and ease in twenties-style silk jersey, interwoven with tweed. To new techniques, introduced in beaded, knitted suits that demonstrate exceptional lightness and mobility.
A growing sense of iridescence, combined with the silken, sinuous, and fluid, is further embraced as day turns into the nocturnal world of flight. Here, the ‘papillon de nuit’ emerges. Streamlined coats and dresses in sylphen styles, cut, cascading, stark or ornamented, now lead, still with a sense of dynamism at their core. Made for movement, the wearer is propelled into the night.
The dialogue between the real and the artificial that runs throughout the collection culminates in its accessories. Like an iridescent Impressionist painting, the opalescent set is reflected in colour-saturated enamel and resin jewellery, as well as in artificially tinted genuine mother-of-pearl pieces. Second-skin, cap-toed boots emphasise a sense of the unreal in pastel, supple leathers. While a plethora of bags span the practical to the playful. From the now familiar, essential suede flap bag, fast becoming a classic in its beige incarnation, with its ‘divan matelassé’ taken directly from Gabrielle Chanel’s apartment couch. To the latest ‘kinetic’ lock bag, and the extravagant pomegranate minaudière, with its enamelled, poisoned, iridescence.
CHANEL CHANEL Fall-Winter 2026 Chanel Show
