When Matthieu Blazy first set foot in the couture salon at 31 Rue Cambon – the hallowed Paris address where Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel once staged her shows and watched them secretly from the top of the mirrored staircase – the 41-year-old designer allowed himself a rare moment of unguarded emotion. “I have to say that the first time I stepped in here, I had that feeling,” he told Harper’s Bazaar in May 2026. He lowered his voice. “I was a bit like, fuuuck.“
It is a reaction few would have predicted from the French-Belgian designer whose appointment as Chanel’s artistic director was confirmed on 12 December 2024, ending months of feverish speculation. Blazy is only the fourth person to hold creative authority at the house in its 115-year history – after Coco herself, Karl Lagerfeld, and Virginie Viard. The weight of that lineage is not lost on him, but neither is the opportunity. In the six months since his debut at Paris Fashion Week in October 2025, Blazy has demonstrated that he intends to honour Chanel’s codes whilst fundamentally expanding who they speak to and how they are worn.
The Appointment That Shook the Industry
The announcement landed like a detonation at the close of 2024, a year already staggering from fashion’s great creative director reshuffle. Jonathan Anderson moved to Dior, Hedi Slimane departed Céline, and names including Marc Jacobs and Louise Trotter circulated for top roles. But when Alain Wertheimer, Chanel’s global executive chairman, and Leena Nair, its global CEO, issued their joint statement describing Blazy as “one of the most gifted designers of his generation,” the industry exhaled.
Bruno Pavlovsky, Chanel’s president of fashion, offered his endorsement with characteristic precision: “I am convinced that he will be able to play with the codes and heritage of the House, through an ongoing dialogue with the Studio, our Ateliers, and our Maisons d’art. His audacious personality, his innovative and powerful approach to Creation, as well as his dedication to craftsmanship and beautiful materials, will take Chanel in exciting new directions.”
Blazy’s own statement was characteristically restrained: “I am thrilled and honoured to join the wonderful House of Chanel. I look forward to writing this new chapter together.” What he did not say – and what made the appointment so electrifying – was the résumé behind those words.
The Making of a Magician
Born in Paris on 27 June 1984 to a French father who was an art expert and a Belgian mother who was a historian and researcher, Blazy spent his youth between both countries, absorbing a bilingual sensibility that would later define his work. He enrolled at La Cambre Visual Arts School in Brussels, one of Europe’s most rigorous design programmes, where his graduation collection – inspired by astronaut Claudie Haigneré, the first French woman in space – caught the eye of Raf Simons. “His knowledge and interest in the arts was quite unusual for a young boy at 17,” remembers Tony Delcampe, his former professor at La Cambre.
What followed was a masterclass in apprenticeship. Simons hired Blazy straight out of school to design menswear for his eponymous label. At Maison Margiela, Blazy worked anonymously on the Artisanal haute couture line, his name only revealed when fashion journalist Suzy Menkes blew his cover in a 2014 review. Stints at Céline under Phoebe Philo and at Calvin Klein alongside Raf Simons honed his technical range. But it was his appointment as creative director at Bottega Veneta in November 2021 that transformed him from a respected behind-the-scenes figure into one of fashion’s most talked-about talents. At Bottega, Blazy conjured trompe-l’oeil miracles – leather that mimicked denim, flannel, and paper; the famous white tank top paired with leather jeans inspired by Natalie Portman’s character in Closer. He earned the sobriquet “Magician of Milan” from New York Times chief fashion critic Vanessa Friedman.
The commercial results were equally striking. In the first nine months of 2024, Bottega Veneta reported a 4 per cent sales increase to €1.23 billion, making it the top-performing brand in Kering’s portfolio during a brutal luxury downturn. As Leo Rongone, Bottega Veneta’s CEO, noted when announcing Blazy’s departure: “I want to express my profound appreciation for Matthieu, who has been an extraordinary partner in infusing our brand with desirability, emotional resonance, and intellectual identity.”
The Grand Palais Debut
Blazy’s first collection for Chanel, shown on 6 October 2025 at the Grand Palais – fresh from a multi-year, €500 million restoration to which Chanel contributed a reported €25 million – was a cosmic spectacle. Enormous glowing planets hung overhead; others were installed at ground level, punctuating the venue’s gleaming black floor. Margot Robbie, Penélope Cruz, Pedro Pascal, Nicole Kidman, and brand ambassador Ayo Edebiri occupied the front row.
The set was no mere decoration. “For this first show, I wanted to do something quite universal, like a dream, something outside of time,” Blazy said on Instagram. “We all observe the same sky, and I think it provokes the same emotions in us.”
The opening look announced the new era with quiet authority: a cropped blazer in micro houndstooth taupe, twin low-waist pants, simplified closures, widened shoulders, rolled sleeves. There was no visible Chanel logo. The shoes were classic black and white. The handbag – a mangled Chanel 2.55 – looked as though it had been lived in. As CNN‘s Fiona Sinclair Scott observed: “Despite all the potential distractions and hype – the buzz of the debut, the dramatic set and the A-list front row – the clothes came first.” The audience rose to their feet.
A New Kind of Chanel Woman
Blazy’s most radical intervention has been conceptual rather than purely aesthetic. “I thought that the Chanel aesthetic was somehow overshadowing the idea of women,” he told Harper’s Bazaar. “It was one woman, but I see many, many women.”
That philosophy has translated into concrete changes. Blazy casts his shows with women of all ages and backgrounds – 49-year-old model and vintage store owner Stephanie Cavalli, whom he calls a modern-day Coco Chanel, has walked in three of his shows and opened two. “Opening up these possibilities for different people, different ages, different races; it’s like a flower opening and blossoming,” Cavalli says.
The disruption extends to menswear. A$AP Rocky, Jacob Elordi, Pedro Pascal, and Kendrick Lamar have all worn Blazy’s Chanel, but he refuses to frame it as gendered. “We will never communicate about the fact that we do menswear,” Blazy says. “There are just pieces that fit everyone.” In the boutiques, he has replaced gendered numerical sizing with S, M, L – removing the gender of the sizing altogether.
This is not mere progressive posturing. It is a strategic recalibration of who Chanel is for – and how that translates into commercial reality at a house generating approximately $20 billion in annual revenue. “No one needs a new bag or a new jacket,” Blazy says. “Chanel has to be a dream.”
The Métiers d’Art Show and the New York Subway
If the Grand Palais debut established Blazy’s cosmic ambitions, his second collection – the Métiers d’art show staged in December 2025 in an abandoned New York City subway station – grounded them in the grit and vitality of everyday life. The choice of venue was a deliberate provocation: here was Chanel’s artisanal craftsmanship, showcased in the most democratic of settings, with models cast as New York archetypes hustling to catch a train.
Blazy had unearthed a story about Coco Chanel’s first visit to New York in 1931, when she noticed how many women were dressed in knockoff Chanel – not mimicking a logo but a style. “When she came back to Paris, she actually reinvented herself completely and shortened her skirts. That’s where she became modern – radically modern,” Blazy explains.
The collection delivered that radical modernity with precision. A quarter-zip sweater opened the show, paired with simple jeans. A skirt suit was embroidered with raffia and handblown glass beads designed to look like popcorn. A flannel shirt was actually made of bouclé. The magic lay in the dissonance – clothes that took hundreds of hours to make, worn by people who looked as though they were simply trying to get somewhere on time.
Jessie Buckley, who accepted her Best Actress Oscar in a red-and-pink Chanel gown, captured the feeling: “There is something very alive in his clothes. At the Métiers show, I felt emboldened and tall and alert and in love with all of the characters of women. There was a pulse to it.”
The Le19M Revolution
Behind the spectacle, Blazy has been reorganising Chanel’s creative operations. Le19M, the complex housing 11 artisan maisons – Lesage for embroidery, Lemarié for flowers, Massaro for shoemaking – has traditionally served couture only. Blazy is bringing them into ready-to-wear too.
“You don’t just do a little embroidery because it’s pretty,” Blazy says. “It needs to explain something, bring an idea.” This integration of craft into commercial collections is perhaps his most consequential strategic move, positioning Chanel as a living repository of artisanal knowledge rather than merely a luxury label.
What Comes Next
Blazy will oversee ten annual collections – two ready-to-wear, two haute couture, two pre-collections, one cruise, one Métiers d’art, and seasonal lines. His Fall 2026 collection, featuring chain-mail skirt suits and belted drop waists, was shown in March to further acclaim. Astronaut Claudie Haigneré, the inspiration for his La Cambre graduation collection three decades earlier, sat in the front row – a poetic full circle.
The challenge ahead is immense. Lagerfeld led Chanel for 36 years, transforming it into a pop-culture juggernaut. Viard’s five-year tenure, while commercially successful, was widely perceived as transitional. Blazy must prove he can sustain creative energy across years, even decades, whilst navigating an industry defined by conglomerate rivalries and shifting consumer expectations.
But Blazy possesses something his predecessors did not: the technical mastery to fully leverage Chanel’s exceptional métiers, combined with a democratic vision that broadens the brand’s appeal without diluting its exclusivity. As Pavlovsky notes: “Something perhaps cooler than it was before.”
In a fashion landscape crowded with noise, Matthieu Blazy is betting that the most powerful statement is a whisper – a perfectly cut sleeve, a subverted logo, a model who looks like someone you might actually know. The question is no longer whether he belongs at Chanel. It is how far he will take it.
This article draws on reporting from Harper’s Bazaar, Vogue, CNN, the Business of Fashion, and WWD. All quotes are attributed to their original sources.
