At Paris Fashion Week, Chanel unveiled a collection that explored transformation in its most poetic form. Staged at the Grand Palais Éphémère, the show marked a new chapter for the house under Matthieu Blazy, who approached his role as Artistic Director of Fashion Activities with a meditation on duality—between function and fantasy, day and night, practicality and seduction.
The guiding metaphor came from Gabrielle Chanel herself: the relationship between caterpillar and butterfly. “Fashion is both caterpillar and butterfly,” she once said. “We need dresses that crawl and dresses that fly.” Blazy embraced this idea wholeheartedly, presenting a collection that moved gradually from grounded simplicity to iridescent elegance.
“We need dresses that crawl and dresses that fly.”
-Gabrielle Chanel.
A Stage of Iridescent Transformation
Courtesy of Chanel.
Courtesy of Chanel.
Guests entered a luminous environment designed to evoke an opalescent landscape—its surfaces shimmering with subtle shifts of color that echoed the collection’s central theme of metamorphosis. The reflective set, glowing in soft pearlescent hues, mirrored the changing textures and tones of the garments as they passed down the runway.
The front row reflected Chanel’s enduring cultural reach, with Penélope Cruz, Margaret Qualley, Lupita Nyong’o, and Jennie Kim among those in attendance, alongside longtime house ambassadors and global press gathered for one of the week’s most anticipated shows.
From the opening look, Blazy established a sense of quiet motion. Silhouettes layered across decades of Chanel history—from the 1920s through the 1960s—while remaining firmly rooted in the present. The collection unfolded like a timeline, referencing past eras yet never feeling archival.
Reimagining the Chanel Suit
Courtesy of Chanel.
At the heart of the collection was the Chanel suit, treated as a living framework rather than a fixed uniform. Blazy approached the house’s most recognizable garment with both reverence and experimentation, reshaping its proportions and materials to emphasize lightness and flexibility.
Classic tweed jackets appeared alongside ribbed knit versions that softened the suit’s traditional structure. Bouclé work shirts paired with masculine pressed-tweed blousons introduced an ease that felt both modern and familiar. In other looks, silk jersey was woven directly into tweed constructions, creating garments that moved fluidly while maintaining Chanel’s signature texture.
Some suits shimmered with woven threads of lurex and silicone, catching the light as models walked. Others were intricately beaded or knitted to achieve surprising softness and mobility. The effect was one of technical innovation paired with the quiet elegance that defines the house.
Throughout, Blazy emphasized the idea of clothing as a canvas for individual expression. As he explained in the show notes, Chanel embodies contradiction: “Chanel is function, Chanel is fiction. Chanel is sensible, Chanel is seductive. Chanel is day, Chanel is night.”
“Chanel is function, Chanel is fiction. Chanel is sensible, Chanel is seductive.”
-Matthieu Blazy.
From Daylight Ease to Nighttime Flight
Courtesy of Chanel.
Courtesy of Chanel.
As the collection progressed, silhouettes grew lighter and more fluid. The grounded textures of tweed gradually gave way to garments that appeared almost airborne.
Streamlined coats and cascading dresses emerged in delicate, sylph-like shapes, suggesting the moment when the caterpillar becomes the butterfly. Iridescent fabrics shimmered with subtle color shifts, while sheer layers floated around the body with effortless movement.
Blazy described this transformation as the arrival of the “papillon de nuit”, or night butterfly. These evening looks carried a sense of quiet drama—long dresses that glided across the runway, coats cut with sweeping lines, and fabrics that reflected the opalescent tones of the set.
Courtesy of Chanel.
Courtesy of Chanel.
Accessories continued the dialogue between reality and illusion. Jewelry in enamel and resin echoed the show’s iridescent palette, while pieces of artificially tinted mother-of-pearl added a luminous glow. Pastel leather boots hugged the leg like a second skin, reinforcing the collection’s emphasis on mobility.
Bags balanced practicality with playfulness. Alongside the now-familiar suede beige flap bag, whose quilted pattern references the sofa in Gabrielle Chanel’s apartment, new designs appeared—including a kinetic lock bag and an ornate pomegranate minaudière, glimmering with enamel and jewel-like surfaces.
In Blazy’s hands, Chanel becomes less a fixed aesthetic than a living conversation—one that moves fluidly between grounded reality and imaginative possibility. Like the caterpillar and butterfly that inspired the show, the house continues to evolve while remaining unmistakably itself.
As the final looks floated across the runway, the message felt clear: Chanel’s transformation is ongoing, and under Blazy, the journey between day and night has only just begun.
Courtesy of Chanel.
