Written By | Fashion and Design Desk
A year into his tenure, the former Bottega Veneta designer showed 83 looks beneath illuminated birds, tracing Coco Chanel's journey from constraint to freedom.
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PARIS
The show took place on Monday, Oct. 5, at the Grand Palais in Paris, but its conversation is still running. Chanel's Spring-Summer 2027 womenswear collection, the one-year mark for artistic director Matthieu Blazy, has become one of the defining stories of Paris Fashion Week.
Blazy, formerly of Bottega Veneta, succeeded Virginie Viard, who had taken over after Karl Lagerfeld's death in 2019. AP fashion writer Thomas Adamson wrote that a year into his tenure Blazy has made the house feel newly unpredictable, balancing continuity with change.
A story about the women within
The collection comprised 83 looks, blending sportswear with evening dresses. Blazy's show notes framed the presentation around the story of Gabrielle 'Coco' Chanel's movement from Edwardian constraint toward freedom in dress. In his words, 'It's about the women within a woman.'
The show opened and closed with a symbolic gesture. Model Dyanira Hurbuscher carried Gabrielle Chanel's own 2.55 handbag, borrowed from the house archives. For a brand built on its founder's mythology, it was a pointed reminder that the archive is a living resource rather than a museum piece.
What was on the runway
The silhouettes ranged widely. AP's review describes knits that skim the body, masculine tailoring, airy eveningwear and sharply short skirts. Raw-edged waistcoats and narrow skirt suits reworked men's formal wear, while a pearl-embroidered corset top was paired with black trousers.
Historical references surfaced throughout: ruffled collars, peplums and traces of corset boning. A new 'smocked tweed' was engineered to stretch and move with ease, updating the house's signature fabric for comfort. The reviewer found the layered, printed silk dresses more persuasive than the tutus, which at times read as costume.
The front row and the mood
The audience was as star-studded as Paris expects. Nicole Kidman attended with her daughter Faith Margaret, Dua Lipa wore a sleeveless skirt suit with pink heels, and Pedro Pascal also sat in the front row. The presence of such guests underscores Chanel's cultural pull at a moment when every major house is competing for attention.
Reactions elsewhere were mixed, as is typical. On theFashionSpot's forum, one reviewer wrote, 'The nightmare continues,' reflecting the divide among fashion enthusiasts, while the AP review leaned positive. That range of opinion is itself evidence of a house in transition rather than in stasis.:max_bytes(150000):strip_icc()/121624-Bottega-Chanel-embed1-9386c19c2b4f41ae9e1e11b30eac6435.jpg)
Paris in context
Chanel's show sat within a season rich with change. Louis Vuitton showed Nicolas Ghesquière's concise Spring 2027 collection, Miu Miu's sportswear-inspired offering drew strong views, and Jonathan Anderson's ultra-feminine Dior and Haider Ackermann's Tom Ford were among the other talking points on forums. Sportswear and tailoring ideas appear across several houses, which makes Chanel's blend of sporty pieces and evening dresses feel part of a larger conversation.
What sets Blazy's approach apart, according to AP, is its willingness to treat Chanel's heritage as something open to play while keeping serious atelier work at its core.
What this means for you
The most wearable takeaways are the ones grounded in ease: knitwear that skims the body, tailoring borrowed from menswear and a looser attitude toward evening dress. The smocked tweed signals that tweed-inspired pieces may become softer and more flexible over the coming seasons.
If you are shopping, look for waistcoats, narrow skirt suits and single statement details like pearl embroidery rather than head-to-toe runway looks. Mixing a sporty piece with something dressy is the clearest idea in the collection and works at any price point.
The bottom line
One year in, Blazy has shown that Chanel can surprise without abandoning its identity. Whether the collection wins over every critic is less important than the fact that people are debating it passionately. For a heritage house, being unpredictable again may be the best news of all.
