After a re-energizing year, Chanel takes flight

A year after his highly-rated debut as the new artistic director of Chanel, Matthieu Blazy showed that despite the rave reviews and frenzied shoppers, he hasn’t lost sight of how it all began. On Monday night, the designer presented an ode to the house’s founder, Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel through a collection that celebrated — and, importantly, offered clothing for — the many stages of a woman’s life.

Opening the show, model Dyanira Hurbuscher walked in a sheer look — a bra hinting at the boning seen in Edwardian-era corsetry, but completely softened and unrestricted (Gabrielle famously rejected the stiff fashion rules of her time). Hurbuscher carried one of Madam Chanel’s personal 2.55 bags, plucked out of the Patrimoine archives. This piece of fashion history acted as a bookend, appearing again in the collection’s final look — honoring fashion’s matriarch from start to finish.

But last night’s runway wasn’t meant to be a history lesson, Blazy said in show notes, this was about giving women the clothing they need at each chapter: “Throughout their lives, women become multiple selves, different faces of the same coin. It’s like a game of exquisite corpse, where one identity leads to another. It’s about the women within a woman. And here, it’s about one woman, Gabrielle, who then became Chanel.”

It’s true, a woman may inhabit the same body all her life, but she is far from static, rather always shifting and transforming — adopting new roles or playing different characters within the same skin and bones.

Cha Gonzalez for CNN

In Blazy’s telling, underwear, whimsical tulle skirts, color-clashing patterns and playful (and detachable) clown collars — light, youthful and buoyant in spirit — serve as the beginning of the story, making way for clothes that a woman with a job and responsibilities might need to get through the day while looking great: pinstripe trousers, soft tailoring, enriched with textural details like the often-present feathery floral brooches, and a couple of takes on a men’s gilet cinched in at the waist. Later, clothing for life’s joyful milestones: silk 1930s-style dresses, sequins and an opulent black billowing gown.

Of course, signature skirt suits and tweed appeared throughout but there was technical innovation here in the form of what the designer is calling “smocked tweed,” a stretchy more malleable iteration of a Chanel classic which he playfully likened to sportswear. Many of these archetypal suits were also worn with nothing underneath — no longer uptight bourgeois armor, but rather designs meant to be worn “lightly as perfume.”

Birds — namely swifts, swallows, cranes and geese — served as a motif, popping up within the invitations, decorating some of the garments, and soaring above our heads during the show. The idea for the set came to Blazy while on holiday in the south of Italy, where he was inspired by an area of Calabria that acts a natural reserve for birds.

Bringing it back his founder he said, “Ultimately, Chanel took off, and each step she took led to her being free, like a bird.” The energy both outside and within the Grand Palais reflected this spirit, with guests including Dua Lipa, Nicole Kidman and Pedro Pascal spotted dancing in their seats to Britney Spears’ “Gimme More.”

Blazy, 42, who cannot resist injecting a mood-boosting millennial banger into his show music, was clearly having fun this season. And why wouldn’t he after such a successful first year? As the finale of models filed backstage, the designer came out to take his bow, light on his feet as he waved to the audience before running back to his team, arms wide open ready for whatever comes next.

Scroll down to see inside the Chanel Spring-Summer 2027, in a series of images by Paris-based photographer Cha Gonzalez.

在马修·布拉齐 (Matthieu Blazy) 以备受好评的姿态出任香奈儿艺术总监一年后，他用实际行动证明，尽管好评如潮、购物狂潮不断，他依然没有忘记初心。周一晚，这位设计师以一场致敬香奈儿创始人加布里埃尔·“可可”·香奈儿 (Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel) 的系列作品，颂扬了女性人生各个阶段的着装需求，更重要的是，这些服装也满足了这些需求。

开场模特迪雅妮拉·赫布舍尔身着透视装亮相——胸罩隐约可见爱德华时代紧身胸衣的骨架，但整体风格却柔和无拘束（众所周知，加布里埃尔·香奈儿拒绝接受当时僵化的时尚规则）。赫布舍尔手提香奈儿女士的私人2.55手袋，这款手袋是从香奈儿的珍藏系列中挑选出来的。这件时尚史料如同首尾呼应，在系列的最后一个造型中再次出现——从始至终，以此向这位时尚界的传奇人物致敬。

但布雷兹在秀场笔记中表示，昨晚的T台秀并非旨在讲述历史，而是为了给女性在人生的每个阶段提供她们所需的服装：“在她们的一生中，女性会成为多个不同的自我，就像一枚硬币的不同面。这就像玩‘妙不可言’的游戏，一个身份会引出另一个身份。它关乎女性内在的女性特质。而在这里，它讲述的是一位女性——加布里埃尔，她后来成为了香奈儿。”

没错，一个女人可能一生都住在同一个身体里，但她远非静止不变，而是不断地变化和转变——在同一副皮囊和骨骼中扮演新的角色或不同的人物。

CNN记者查·冈萨雷斯报道

在布莱兹的叙述中，内衣、轻盈飘逸的薄纱裙、撞色图案和俏皮（且可拆卸）的小丑领——轻盈、青春、轻快——构成了故事的开端，随后过渡到职业女性在履行职责的同时，也能保持优雅得体的日常着装：细条纹长裤、剪裁柔和的服装，以及点缀其中的质感细节，例如常见的羽毛状花朵胸针，还有几款收腰的男士马甲。之后，故事又转向人生中值得庆祝的里程碑时刻：丝绸材质的1930年代风格连衣裙、亮片装饰和一件华丽的黑色飘逸长裙。

当然，标志性的裙装和粗花呢套装贯穿始终，但此次也融入了技术创新，设计师称之为“褶皱粗花呢”，这是一种更具弹性和可塑性的香奈儿经典面料，他戏称其为运动服。许多此类经典套装也都是内搭真空——不再是拘谨的资产阶级盔甲，而是旨在“如香水般轻盈”穿着的设计。

鸟类——尤其是雨燕、燕子、鹤和鹅——是本次时装秀的主题元素，它们出现在邀请函中，装饰着部分服装，并在​​秀场上空翱翔。Blazy在意大利南部度假时萌生了这场秀的灵感，卡拉布里亚一处鸟类自然保护区给了他极大的启发。

他回顾了创始人的话语：“最终，香奈儿腾飞了，她迈出的每一步都让她像鸟儿一样自由翱翔。” 大皇宫内外都洋溢着这种精神，包括杜阿·利帕、妮可·基德曼和佩德罗·帕斯卡在内的宾客们都被发现随着布兰妮·斯皮尔斯的《Gimme More》在座位上翩翩起舞。

42岁的布雷兹（Blazy）总喜欢在时装秀的配乐中加入一些能提振士气的千禧一代热门歌曲，显然他本季玩得很开心。毕竟第一年就如此成功，他当然乐在其中。模特们陆续退场后，这位设计师轻盈地走出来谢幕，一边向观众挥手致意，一边跑回团队身边，张开双臂，准备迎接接下来的一切。

向下滚动即可欣赏巴黎摄影师 Cha Gonzalez 拍摄的一系列照片，了解 Chanel 2027 春夏系列的内部构造。