PARIS (AP) — Coco Chanel designed her postwar suit so women could move. Seven decades later, Matthieu Blazy has made it stretch.
Suits in a new “smocked tweed” anchored Blazy’s spring-summer 2027 collection for Chanel, shown Monday night at the Grand Palais beneath a flock of illuminated birds as Nicole Kidman, Dua Lipa and Pedro Pascal watched from the front row.
The fabric gives like sportswear, but the idea is old. Chanel built its name by changing
how women dressed, and a year after his debut as its designer, Blazy is applying that principle to the house’s own uniform.
Louis Vuitton was due to close Paris Fashion Week on Tuesday evening, the final major show of a spring runway season that began in New York last month.
Blazy came from Bottega Veneta to succeed Virginie Viard, Karl Lagerfeld ’s longtime right hand, who took over after his death in 2019. Viard’s tenure brought record sales. Blazy’s has brought back surprise.
He loosens the house’s symbols rather than replacing them. Tweed stretches. Jackets go on over bare skin. Quilted bags slouch. Longtime clients still recognize the codes; newer ones are invited to play with them.
This season, he staged Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel’s life as an escape: from the corsets and stiff tailoring of her Edwardian youth, through the men’s clothes she borrowed, to the easy suits of her postwar comeback.
“It’s about the women within a woman,” Blazy wrote in his show notes.
Kidman, who attended with her daughter Faith Margaret, also supplied recorded readings from Virginia Woolf’s “Orlando,” whose protagonist lives across centuries and changes sex — Blazy’s theme, in fiction. Kidman won an Oscar for portraying Woolf in “The Hours.”
Kidman, Lipa, Pascal and Alexa Demie sang along to a-ha’s “Take On Me,” and the show ended with Britney Spears’ “Gimme More.”
Edwardian dress lingered in traces of boning, peplums and ruffled collars. Men’s formal wear was cut down into raw-edged vests and narrow skirt suits.
And one look set a pearl-stitched corset top against plain black trousers, a sign that the collection’s relationship with restraint was more complicated than escape.
The most beautiful pieces were dresses of layered, printed silk that tracked the sky from morning to nightfall, and 1930s-style gowns, sequined or beaded, light enough to pull on like a T-shirt.
Not everything landed. Pattern-on-pattern outfits and ballet tutus tipped into costume, and at 83 looks, the argument sometimes sprawled.
The birds made it more gracefully: swallows perched on buttons and jewelry, and a birdcage evening bag came with its birds already flown.
Model Dyanira Hurbuscher walked first and last, both times carrying the founder’s own 2.55 handbag from the house archives — freedom, with the past firmly in hand.
Across Paris, designers made similar moves: mixing formal clothes with sportswear, bringing lingerie into public view and making elaborate decoration feel lighter.
Miu Miu worked the same seam from the opposite side, dressing sportswear up. Miuccia Prada paired pleated check skirts and blazers with running shorts and track tops, shoelaces became belts, and guests watched from gym-style bleachers. Olivia Colman modeled a black leather skirt suit, joining Jamie Bell and Emma Corrin on the runway.
Sacai’s Chitose Abe, back on the women’s runway after a season away, set tough clothes in motion. Biker leathers broke into swinging fringe, silk tassels crowned military jackets, and printed beads and rhinestones under sheer layers gave the look of embellishment without the weight. She finished by running to hug Pharrell Williams.
At Valentino, plain satin bustiers and knee-length skirts offered a more intimate kind of formality. Showing at the Sainte-Geneviève Library, Alessandro Michele compared unworn clothes with unread books in his notes: both “still speak to us of the lives we could have lived.” Alexander Skarsgård brought Icelandic sagas to donate.
Elie Saab took lingerie in a more nostalgic direction. Beaded slips and lace bralettes recalled the early 2000s, when Halle Berry won her Oscar in one of his gowns. Paris and Nicky Hilton sat in the front row.
Victoria Beckham’s pleated dresses hung from jewelry chains, taffeta raincoats looked weightless and wedge sandals had their heels hollowed out. As with Blazy’s stretch tweed, the engineering served a practical end: giving the body more freedom to move.
