We counted almost 100 birds suspended above the runway at Chanel on Monday night. Beneath them, the Grand Palais glowed with a huge moon and a multicoloured glass floor that reflected the models as they walked. There was plenty to look at before the first look even appeared.
There was also a front row worth watching. Nicole Kidman, Dua Lipa, Pedro Pascal, Marion Cotillard, Kristen Wiig, Sandra Hüller, Alexa Demie and Caroline de Maigret were among the guests. Kidman and Lipa were dancing in their seats throughout the show, clearly enjoying a playlist that finished with Britney Spears’s “Gimme More”. By then, the song felt like a very fair assessment of the mood in the room.
Kidman had another role in the evening, too. Her voice featured on the soundtrack, reading passages from Virginia Woolf’s Orlando and To the Lighthouse. Hearing the Aussie icon’s voice while watching the collection unfold added something special to the scale of the production, with an especially lovely connection to her portrayal of Woolf in The Hours.
A year into his tenure at Chanel, Matthieu Blazy appears increasingly comfortable with the sheer breadth of what he can do here. Across 83 looks, he moved from delicate jersey lingerie to sharply shaped tailoring, exuberant prints and dresses that ballooned around the models as they walked. There was a lot to take in, but the shifts in silhouette and mood kept the show moving.
Gabrielle Chanel was his starting point, with all the different women she became throughout her life. There was the young Gabrielle, who wore the restrictive corsetry of the Edwardian era before challenging it; the woman experimenting with men’s clothes; and the designer whose suits would give women greater ease. Blazy explored how those experiences shaped one another, with each new silhouette revealing something of the woman she had been and the woman she was becoming. Her pursuit of freedom connected them all.
You could see that thinking in the clothes without needing to follow every historical reference. A corset-inspired top, its panels outlined in dark trim, appeared beneath a bright red jacket and above a softly moving ivory skirt. The structure remained visible, but the outfit had room to move. Pale blue and cream ballet dresses paired fitted bodices with generous layers of tulle. The proportions were theatrical, particularly when those skirts bounced down the runway.
Elsewhere, Blazy brought the silhouette closer to the body. There were sheer knits, a pearl-embroidered corset paired with black trousers, and jackets worn against bare skin. A scarlet skirt suit was particularly good: the jacket secured high at the neck, then left open across the torso, with the skirt loosening into a fluttering hem.
The tailoring had range. Chic cropped jackets sat alongside longer, sloping hems, while sleeveless waistcoats curved in at the waist. An ivory coatdress punctuated with mismatched gold buttons offered a clean pause between the more elaborate looks.
Then Blazy really turned up the colour. Ruffled collars, graphic jackets, patterned skirts and printed boots arrived. Pink and red above, green below, yellow and blue at the feet: there was something wonderfully cheeky about putting so many competing elements together. It gave the collection a welcome dose of eccentricity.
Some of the loveliest outfits were also the least complicated in shape. A pale green evening dress followed the body before falling into an uneven, floating hem. Long necklaces swung over loose, sleeveless tops. Sequins and beadwork supplied the glamour, while the clothes themselves looked light and easy.
That lightness became spectacular in the cloud dresses. One pale blue look, washed with pink, had sweeping panels that billowed out on either side of the model. A dark, sparkling version gathered volume around the legs, its folds catching the runway lights. Watching them approach, then pass, was essential to appreciating the effect: the fabric kept opening out and settling into a different shape.
The birds above us had their counterparts in buttons, jewellery and embroidery. The set drew on a southern Italian village where Blazy spends his holidays, near a river visited by migrating birds. That connection gave the evening’s imagery a personal origin. Across the collection, their suggestion of freedom came through in fabric that lifted, floated and followed the body.
Even tweed had been given more flexibility. The collection introduced smocked tweed, developed to stretch and move with the wearer. It brought Gabrielle Chanel’s ambition for easier dressing into the present through a new fabric technique. The suit she had done so much to establish could now offer greater mobility, carrying her ideas forward in a form made possible by today’s atelier.
The accessories offered plenty of temptation, from colourful and patterned flap bags to a new watch-chain fastening and a birdcage minaudière. But the most meaningful bag was already decades old. Dyanira Hurbuscher opened and closed the show carrying Gabrielle Chanel’s own 2.55, borrowed from the house archives. Returning to the same model and bag after so many changes of silhouette neatly connected the collection’s different versions of Gabrielle.
It was a thoughtful detail in an evening that also knew how to have fun. By the time Britney played, we had seen ballet skirts, bare skin, brilliant tailoring and dresses that seemed to fill with air. Kidman and Lipa were still moving to the music. Chanel had given them – and the rest of us – a show to remember.
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