Chanel's Paris Fashion Week Show Rebuilds Brand with Monet-Inspired Set
The set for Chanel's Paris Fashion Week show transformed a building site into a chic spectacle, with cranes in Meccano-bright colors towering over the catwalk. According to designer Matthieu Blazy, the opalescent floor shimmered with sequin-bright reflections, drawing inspiration from Monet. This artistic nod has become a backstage buzzword this week, as Chanel and Dior vie for bragging rights over French culture.
Blazy's Enthusiastic Rebuilding of Chanel
Matthieu Blazy, who joined Chanel last year, is rebuilding the designer with a kid-in-a-candy-store enthusiasm that is evident in his confident approach. The show's invitation was a tiny stainless steel tape measure on a pendant, symbolizing his meticulous immersion into house history. After the presentation, Blazy greeted reporters clutching a folded printout of a 1955 interview Coco Chanel gave to Le Figaro, an artifact even Bruno Pavlovsky, president of fashion since 1990, had never seen before.
Blazy's infectious energy has resonated in the city, with Chanel boutiques packed all week. A simple cotton shirt embroidered with the Chanel name sold out at 3,900 euros, and new season bags are limited to one per customer to curb resale at inflated prices.
Updating Chanel's Handwriting with Modern Touches
"Chanel is function, Chanel is fiction," Blazy declared, echoing Coco Chanel's revolutionary spirit. He presented the brand as both rarefied and real, reimagining classic pieces like the Chanel jacket. On the catwalk, it appeared in oversized shirt silhouettes reminiscent of the French chore jacket, with flipped collars and turned-back cuffs, or as a blouson paired with trousers.
Influences from Phoebe Philo, with whom Blazy worked at Celine, are detectable in the confident colors, untucked hems, and a loosening of Chanel's strict lozenge silhouettes. The show closed with a soft jersey little black dress, a tribute to Coco's greatest contribution, reworked with an open back and a single silk camellia decoration.
Deep Research and Brand Legacy
Bruno Pavlovsky praised Blazy's depth of research, noting that while Karl Lagerfeld had the freedom to blur storytelling lines after 30 years, Blazy is starting anew at the roots. Pavlovsky also mentioned Chanel has numerous requests for the Oscar red carpet but is currently focused on teams in the Middle East, where boutiques remain open at government request with security as a priority.
Louis Vuitton's Avant-Garde Show at the Louvre
On the final day of Paris Fashion Week, Louis Vuitton held a show in a modernist marquee hidden in an internal courtyard of the Louvre. Designer Nicolas Ghesquière, recently knighted in the Legion of Honour, explored nomadic themes with a cubist landscape of mossy green hillocks, created in collaboration with Jeremy Hindle, production designer of AppleTV's Severance.
The collection featured jackets with shoulder pads arched into angel wings and models carrying bags hooked over staffs in a nomad-style. Ghesquière reflected on fashion as anthropology, expressing different cultures and collective experiences worldwide.
