When the lights dimmed for Chanel’s Spring/Summer 2026 show, a hush fell over the Grand Palais Éphémère. What unfolded was less a debut than a conversation—a cross-temporal dialogue between the house’s new Artistic Director of Fashion Activities, Mathieu Blazy, and Gabrielle Chanel herself.
“Chanel is about love,” Blazy said in the show notes. “The birth of modernity in fashion comes from a love story. This is what I find most beautiful. It has no time or space; it’s an idea of freedom. The freedom worn and won by Gabrielle Chanel.” Across the runway, that idea of love—as liberation, as invention—was stitched into every look.
