{"id":922978,"date":"2026-10-06T16:44:11","date_gmt":"2026-10-06T16:44:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/922978\/"},"modified":"2026-10-06T16:44:11","modified_gmt":"2026-10-06T16:44:11","slug":"chanel-is-all-about-joy-as-blazy-celebrates-year-at-helm-of-worlds-hottest-brand-chanel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/922978\/","title":{"rendered":"Chanel is all about joy as Blazy celebrates year at helm of world\u2019s hottest brand | Chanel"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cIt\u2019s a good start,\u201d Matthieu Blazy said after a Paris show that marked a year of his tenure as artistic director at Chanel<\/a>. \u201cI am happy with where we are at.\u201d<\/p>\n

Chanel now holds the top spot in the Lyst index of the world\u2019s hottest brands, which tracks demand and engagement across search and social media. The privately held company announces official financial results only once a year, but figures reported by Bloomberg showed 16% growth in the first half of 2026. In Vanity Fair\u2019s list<\/a> of the world\u2019s 50 most powerful people, published this month, Blazy is the only fashion designer to make the cut. People who don\u2019t much care about fashion have noticed him; people who do care about fashion talk about him non-stop.<\/p>\n

Models on the runway for the show. Photograph: Ed Alcock\/The Guardian<\/p>\n

Blazy\u2019s Chanel is about joy. Smiley and chatty in person, he enthuses about his team and the women he dresses, presenting a friendly face of Chanel that contrasts with Karl Lagerfeld\u2019s legendary acid tongue and Coco\u2019s controlled brutalist chic. He talks about his job like a child in a candy store, not a tortured artist: he got the idea for this stage set, a flock of 95 giant white birds suspended from the domed steel and glass ceiling of the Grand Palais in Paris, while on holiday in southern Italy with his partner, watching migrating birds fly above the Crati River.<\/p>\n

Matthieu Blazy on the runway after the presentation. Photograph: Mohammed Badra\/EPA<\/p>\n

One of Chanel\u2019s most famous adverts of the 1990s featured Vanessa Paradis in a birdcage<\/a>; now, Chanel\u2019s birds fly free. For the soundtrack of the show Blazy had asked Nicole Kidman to read a passage \u201cabout time, about freedom\u201d from Virginia Woolf\u2019s To The Lighthouse, which he had read on that Italian holiday. Fashion was \u201cwomen\u2019s homemade remedy for the dark times\u201d, he said.<\/p>\n

Alexa Demie, Nicole Kidman, Dua Lipa and Pedro Pascal on the front row at the show. Kidman read a passage from To The Lighthouse in the soundtrack. Photograph: Swan Gallet\/WWD\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

After several years when the decaffeinated aesthetic of quiet luxury dominated fashion, the new Chanel shouts with cereal-aisle colours. A red and white embroidered jacket with a jade and turquoise skirt, plus bag and boots in navy and gold. The iconic two-tone pumps, but in zebra stripes and yellow polka dots instead of the traditional camel and black.<\/p>\n

Chanel show with the 2.55 classic bag, a yellow twin set, a red and white embroidered jacket with a jade and turquoise skirt, and the same model closing the show with the 2.55 bag. Composite: Shutterstock\/St\u00e9phane Cardinale\/Corbis\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

The same model opened and closed the show carrying Gabrielle Chanel\u2019s very own 2.55 handbag. \u201cGabrielle actually had very few bags in her own life, which is something I find quite beautiful. So this bag is not broken, but it has a wonderful patina,\u201d Blazy said.<\/p>\n

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Models on the runway for the show. Photograph: Ed Alcock\/The Guardian<\/p>\n

On his moodboard were photographs of the founder he had found in the archive: Gabrielle as a child; with Gigot, her beloved great dane; on a boat; riding a horse; in a Harlequin fancy dress costume; smiling in a bold leopard-print coat and matching hat. \u201cIt is a side of Chanel that is not known: her funny side, her joyful side. I see women as a juxtaposition of so many selves, and Chanel had this incredible layering within herself.\u201d<\/p>\n

A Chanel classic suit. Photograph: Ed Alcock\/MYOP\/The Guardian<\/p>\n

The famous soft-shouldered Chanel suit came worn with nothing beneath, \u201clike perfume\u201d (Blazy, a student of Cocology, will not have missed the allusion to what Marilyn Monroe famously said she wore in bed: Chanel No 5). \u201cI like the idea that when you wear it directly on the skin, it makes a fetish of the suit. A little punk Chanel,\u201d he said. A year of fabric innovation was behind the newest versions of the suit, a smocked silk on an elasticated membrane, which \u201cis my answer to what sporty could mean at Chanel\u201d, Blazy said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cIt\u2019s a good start,\u201d Matthieu Blazy said after a Paris show that marked a year of his tenure…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":922979,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[49,48,75],"class_list":["post-922978","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-entertainment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/922978","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=922978"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/922978\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/922979"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=922978"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=922978"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=922978"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}