Matthieu Blazy’s Chanel couture show embraces storybook fantasy

Matthieu Blazy did not build a sugar-coated fantasy for Chanel. He built a couture garden of giant flowers and climbing vines, then kept the clothes disciplined enough to feel precise, intimate and deeply made.

A storybook set with couture intelligence

The setting at the Grand Palais in Paris played like a fairy tale with its edges sharpened. Giant beanstalks climbed toward the ceiling, huge flowers crowded the salon, and the show unfolded in the Salon d’Honneur with flying chairs, climbing vines and oversized vases built with Martin Brûlé; a watercolour painter sketched the dreamscape as the models moved through it. Even the invitation carried the idea through, a silver pendant shaped like a book engraved with “Once Upon a Time,” with a small bean tucked inside as a Jack and the Beanstalk clue.

Blazy’s starting point was not generic whimsy but Chanel lore. He found a fairy-tale book in Gabrielle Chanel’s apartment, then began wondering whether garments could tell stories the way pages do, and whether her own rise might be read as a fairy tale of its own.

The clothes kept the magic close to the body

The opening look set the mood immediately: a sheer Chanel suit whose check pattern was built from three-dimensional braided ropes, a clever move that made tweed feel magnified and lightly unravelled at the same time. From there came vine embroidery creeping across a skirt and jacket, floral appliqués on skirt suits and dresses, and tiny beastly and botanical motifs everywhere, from insect-shaped buttons to bean-, bird- and animal-shaped minaudières.

The prettiest details were often the least literal. Jackets carried intricate beadwork at the neckline, a motif repeated on boat-neck dresses and sheer gowns; some pieces were softened with gauzy layers, while others leaned into frayed edges and deliberately roughened finishes, a nod to Coco Chanel’s pin-heavy fittings. Blazy even hid mock to-do lists and painted linings inside certain jackets, turning couture into something secret rather than showy.

The fantasy kept mutating into wearable ornament. Shoes were shaped like flowers and butterflies, with heels that looked like little scenes in motion, while the show also delivered feathered ruffs, white feathered wings on the back of a dress, and an embroidered swan motif stretched across a column dress.

What is most likely to filter into bridal and occasionwear

The parts of this Chanel show most likely to travel fastest are transparency, botanical embroidery and miniature-scale embellishment. Sheer skirts and jackets, rough guipure that reads like a blown-up tweed weave, and vine motifs climbing over the body all translate neatly into bridal overlays, reception dresses and occasionwear that wants romance without weight.

Beadwork clustered around the throat, boat-neck shapes and column lines give the collection a polished, almost devotional finish that will show up in bridal separates, evening gowns and red-carpet dressing long before the bigger theatrical gestures do. Even the black jacket speckled with poison-ivy green points away from sweetness and toward ornament that feels deliberate and slightly dangerous.

Beauty styling will take its cue from the same logic of restraint around fantasy. The bird’s-nest hats, the floral shoes, the feathered edges and the tiny bee accents point toward hair ornaments, sculptural pins and petal-like embellishment rather than obvious costume touches.

Why this Chanel feels newly exacting

Blazy treats couture as a miniature, not a mural. He has said the house is not about the big “wow,” but about details, and that idea runs through everything here, from the concealed linings to the way tweed is softened into movement instead of locked into stiffness.