Chanel to stage Métiers d'Art show in Rome, a first for Blazy

Chanel is bringing Métiers d’Art to Rome on December 2, and the choice lands as more than a destination reveal. It is the first Italy-based show of Matthieu Blazy’s Chanel era, a signal that the house wants its newest chapter to open in a city where craft, cinema and old-world grandeur still feel inseparable.

The Métiers d’art line has been staged every year since 2002, and Chanel continues to frame it as a celebration of the exceptional savoir-faire that sits at the heart of its creations. That artisan story is anchored at le19M in Paris, the creative hub Chanel launched in 2021, where 11 Maisons d’art keep the house’s specialist embroidery, featherwork, millinery, ornament and shoemaking traditions in motion. Recent presentations have turned that craft into a travel narrative, with the latest Métiers d’Art collection unveiled in New York City and brought to life through work from Lesage, Massaro, Goossens, Lemarié, Atelier Montex and Maison Michel.

Rome sharpens the message. It will be Chanel’s second Métiers d’Art show in the city after Karl Lagerfeld staged the line there in 2015 at Cinecittà, the film studio that made the collection feel like a set piece from a lost Italian epic. This time, the city is also a statement about geography and memory. Chanel says Gabrielle Chanel first discovered Italy in the summer of 1920, returned often, and deepened her interest in Renaissance painting, antique art and Italian cinema. The house also points to her relationship with Luchino Visconti, who invited her to Italy and introduced her to his family, as part of that enduring bond.

Bruno Pavlovsky, Chanel’s president of fashion and president of Chanel SAS, has said Rome’s heritage makes it a particularly significant setting, and that Blazy knows Italy well, a detail that matters in a house where location is never just scenery. After a subway-inspired New York presentation that cast Blazy’s first Métiers d’Art outing as a cinematic love letter to the city, Rome suggests a different tempo: less metropolitan rush, more layered memory, and a sharper reading of Chanel’s atelier story through Italian light. In Blazy’s hands, Métiers d’Art is becoming not just a tribute to artisans, but a map of the house’s past, and a blueprint for where it wants to go next.