UNE CONVERSATION
‘Chanel is about love. The birth of Modernity in fashion comes from a love story. This is what I find most beautiful. It has no time or space; this is an idea of freedom. The freedom worn and won by Gabrielle Chanel.’ Matthieu Blazy
‘There is no time for cut-and-dried monotony. There is a time for work. And a time for love. That leaves no other time.’ Gabrielle Chanel
This is a universe, the Universe of Chanel. Within it, outside the usual constraints of space and time, a conversation unfolds in three parts. This is between Chanel’s new Artistic Director of Fashion Activities, Matthieu Blazy, and the founder, Gabrielle Chanel.
UN PARADOXE
It begins with a menswear tradition: a shirt and trousers. Borrowed and worn by Gabrielle Chanel from Boy Capel, her most significant other. The shirt then was by the historic French shirtmaker, Charvet – today, it is made together with Chanel. Weighted by a Chanel chain, proportions still adhere to traditional male shirt-making standards. They are joined by masculine-style suit jackets, cut, raw-edged, becoming Chanel proportions. Adopted and altered, British at heart, Chanel’s tweeds are agile, pressed and purposeful. The paradox is in Gabrielle Chanel’s feminine power, won through a wardrobe where the practical and pragmatic never surrender the seductive and striking. A time for work is joined with a time for love, silken and fluid, scooped, draped and knotted, knits travel from daytime discretion to nighttime drama; a new, active ensemble of the feminine and masculine in which Gabrielle Chanel was unapologetically herself. Never just something, but someone.
LE JOUR
Chanel’s daywear moves through time. Classics are deconstructed, yet are always in motion with the body. Lived-in with the worn familiarity of the truly chic, items feel passed down and utilised: the 2.55 bag is crashed, crushed and cherished, its traditional burgundy leather lining exposed; crumpled camellias are intrinsic and integral to knitted silk suits; frayed tweeds of the past are quietly advanced to the present, at times delineated and embroidered. Another kind of familiarity is found in adopting and adapting the architecture of the House; Gabrielle Chanel’s work and life were indivisible after all. Clean, graphic lines in black and white echo Art Deco and the precision of Chanel packaging, sumptuously realised in fluid, knitted silks. While the motif of florals becomes more abstract, cascading and unfurling, hand-painted prints become petals themselves.
L’UNIVERSEL
The universal language of Chanel travels around the globe and into the future, ever expanding. The masculine delineations at the beginning of the collection are reprised, softened and rounded, here borrowed from the blouson. A multiplicity of tweeds and weaves, expertly researched and realised, make their way forward; material experimentation abounds both externally and internally, with individual and contrasting silk print linings. An idea of the future from the past is found in the Chanel fundamentals: grids of tweed become hand-knotted knits and transparencies, the architecture of the Chanel suit laid bare; jewellery, so intrinsic to Chanel, is loaded and treasured, both real and ephemeral, with baroque pearls, glass planets and enamelled chains; footwear is found with a familiar contrasting toe-cap, with heels all perfectly realisable, to propel the wearer forward, securely into the future.
Above all, there is an idea of freedom, of a new universal dress and a borderless blending of styles; the inheritance of not just one Chanel woman, but rather, of Chanel women.
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CHANEL CHANEL SPRING SUMMER 2026
