On Tuesday, Matthieu Blazy presented his first haute couture collection for Chanel at the Grand Palais. The Chanel Haute Couture Spring 2026 show opened with giant toadstools dotting the pale pink set, a nod to Blazy’s desire for lightness and poetry. While gray Paris skies loomed outside, Blazy had conjured a woodland fantasy inside.
| 📌 Key Facts |
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| 👗 Collection: Chanel Haute Couture Spring 2026 ✂️ Designer: Matthieu Blazy (first couture collection at Chanel) 🌫️ Core concept: Radical transparency and lightness 🕊️ Key symbols: Birds, mushrooms, invisible tweed 🧵 Craft: Trompe l’œil organza, silk mousseline, sheer embroidery 👜 Accessories: Weightless 2.55 bag with visible contents 🎭 Casting: Inclusive, age-diverse models 🔮 Vision: Couture designed for movement and wearability |
The collection began with a nude chiffon interpretation of the classic Chanel tweed suit. Stephanie Cavalli, a fortysomething Italian model, wore the translucent layers, which were barely held together by fine chains and pearls sewn into the hems. She carried a whisper of a quilted handbag that spilled an embroidered note. By removing brand signifiers like tweed and camellia flowers, Blazy moved away from the Karl Lagerfeld era and returned to the essence of Gabrielle Chanel herself.
Chanel revolutionized fashion with sleek, fluid designs that liberated women from corsets. She famously advised women to look in the mirror before leaving the house and remove one thing. Blazy took this philosophy further, stripping away layers until almost nothing remained between the audience and the models’ wispy undergarments.
Birds served as his organizing motif. His mood board was filled with avian imagery, and Chanel’s specialty workshops created everything from bright plumage to a raven-black raffia coat. Pigeon-gray petals shimmered on a barely-there skirt suit. Raw threads created the illusion of peacock feathers on a flapper-style dress.
Delicate touches filled the collection. Psychedelic embroideries echoed the surreal set. A tank top and jeans rendered in trompe l’œil organza nodded to his work at Bottega Veneta. A red evening gown topped with a fuzzy cocoon offered the chicest take yet on mushroom couture. Alongside colorful designs were all-black silhouettes, including Alex Consani’s classic little black dress with trailing chiffon sleeves.
For a brand that has long encouraged customers to buy into total looks, the novelty was offering a palette of identities to choose from. Blazy underscored this by inviting models to select personal symbols and messages to stitch into the clothes. His thoughtful approach to casting injected the show with a rare sense of joy. Bhavitha Mandava, fresh off her viral appearance in his Métiers d’Art display in New York, beamed while walking the runway and exited with a small pirouette.
The mood proved infectious. The front row turned into a celebrity karaoke session as brand ambassadors Dua Lipa, A$AP Rocky, and Margaret Qualley lip-synced to the finale soundtrack, a mashup of “Bittersweet Symphony” and “Wonderwall.” It was a welcome dopamine hit.
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Haute couture demands countless man-hours, fittings, and extravagant expense, so designers often create with only special occasions in mind, such as weddings, world premieres, and charity galas. Blazy’s instinct was to do what Coco Chanel once did: make clothes for women to wear to work, to the theater, to the movies, and so on. His couture seemed more relatable than much of what appeared on the runways during fashion week, which made the astounding craftsmanship even more impressive.
Though the Grand Palais’s magic mushrooms and pink weeping willows were cinematic and transporting, this collection’s elaborate embroideries will be best appreciated up close. Even better in the hand because they remained almost impossibly light. At a preview, Blazy said he stumbled upon an inspirational haiku about a bird and a mushroom. Given what’s happening in the world, he wanted to treat this collection as an escape: something magical and poetic, a calm, quiet moment, like a Sunday morning.
The transparent skirt suit that opened the show was cut from the finest blush-pink organza and finished with pink quartz buttons and a traditional hem chain updated with small natural pearls. Flitting birds danced up the sides of the jacket and skirt instead of the usual side seams. The most charming element? Clients will be invited to add personal embroidery to their selections, such as an initial, a zodiac sign, or a heart, as the first model chose for her jacket’s chest pocket. Another significant detail is the transparent version of the classic 2.55 bag she carried; its only contents were an embroidered love letter.
Blazy is fashion’s most hopeful romantic. Alluring details were everywhere you looked, from enamel magic forest creatures for buttons to fungi for shoe heels. Since birds were the organizing motif, there were feathers, both real and represented. The latter appeared on a dégradé velvet pajama set and in thin slices of mother of pearl, which were embroidered all over the men’s oversize shirt and skirt worn by the bride.
Blazy was interested in birds because they are free and travel everywhere. He thought they were a beautiful metaphor for women today. An elaborate mishmash of different bird patterns embroidered on humble cotton, the dress was a 1920s flapper dress that Coco Chanel herself would have recognized. Blazy described it as a cadavre exquis, a surrealist party game, as rendered by Chanel’s petites mains.
Similarly, Blazy’s couture offers women a black tailleur with lowered armholes that feels as comfortable as a sweater. His favorite was the little black dress, which he described as “deadly simple,” yet there is a kind of tension everywhere that’s part of the construction. Walking out of the Candyland fantasy of the set into steady gray Paris rain, one is left with the lasting impression that the House of Chanel is in exceptionally good hands.
