Chanel brings Matthieu Blazy’s Métiers d’Art to Seoul with softer tailoring

Chanel did not just move Matthieu Blazy’s first Métiers d’Art collection to Seoul, it recalibrated the whole mood. Inside Centre Pompidou Hanwha Seoul, ahead of the museum’s public opening on June 4, the house staged its first Métiers d’Art repeat show in the city since 2019 and gave the Asia debut a calmer, cleaner read. The front row had the kind of pull Chanel wants in Korea, with Jennie, G-Dragon, Tilda Swinton and Marion Cotillard all in attendance.

The collection first landed in New York last December, and that city still sits at the center of the story. Chanel has tied the original show to Gabrielle Chanel’s trips to the United States in the 1930s, while Bruno Pavlovsky said Blazy chose New York because it speaks to the house’s craftsmanship and because he knows the city well from living and working there. Chanel has presented Métiers d’art collections every year since 2002 as a tribute to the savoir-faire of its ateliers and partner artisans, but Seoul made that idea feel less archival and more immediate.

What changed in Seoul was the temperature. WWD described lighter tweeds, fluid layering and movement-friendly tailoring, and that is exactly where the collection clicked. The subway-set New York concept, with its harder urban pulse, translated into something more restrained and polished for an Asian luxury audience that tends to read precision, ease and finish with a sharp eye. Jackets looked less rigid, skirts moved with the body, and the whole line felt built for motion rather than display. The result was a softer silhouette without losing the house’s weight.

Seoul is not just another stop on the circuit, either. Chanel has used the city before for repeat shows, including the 2012 cruise collection and the 2018 Paris-New York Métiers d’Art presentation, which says plenty about how seriously the brand treats the market. Bergdorf Goodman also received a one-week retail lead on the collection in New York, along with a Fifth Avenue window takeover tied to the subway-runway idea, so the commercial intent was never far from the glamour. In Seoul, though, the message was bigger than product. Chanel treated the city like a cultural capital and a luxury engine, a place where fashion, art and retail all hit at once.