The new Chanel collection unfolds as a dialogue between past and present, reality and transformation. At its core lies an imagined conversation between Gabrielle Chanel and the House’s Artistic Director of Fashion Activities, Matthieu Blazy, who revisits one of the founder’s most poetic ideas: fashion as a metamorphosis between caterpillar and butterfly, between everyday practicality and seduction.
For Chanel, fashion had to be both functional and transformative. From this vision emerges a collection that explores the freedom to move from day to night, from the essential to the imaginative. Blazy embraces this legacy and translates it into a wardrobe that invites women to express themselves unapologetically, choosing each day who they want to be.
The collection travels across different eras of the Maison’s history, blending silhouettes from the 1920s, 1930s, 1950s and 1960s with a contemporary sensibility. At the center of this temporal journey stands the archetype of the Chanel suit, reimagined as a canvas onto which every woman can project her identity.
The language of the suit expands through new techniques and materials: from ribbed knits to classic tweeds, and intricate fabrics combining artificial fibres, lurex and silicone with natural gauze. Alongside these appear elements that have become integral to the House’s evolving tailoring vocabulary, such as the bouclé-tweed “work shirt” and the masculine pressed-tweed blouson.
Fluidity and lightness—echoing the spirit of the 1920s—also emerge in silk jersey suits interwoven with tweed and in newly developed beaded and knitted tailoring techniques that achieve remarkable lightness and mobility.
As the collection evolves, luminosity takes center stage. Colors and materials develop an increasingly iridescent quality, marking the symbolic transition from day to night. It is here that the “papillon de nuit”, the night butterfly, appears: streamlined coats and dresses with flowing, elongated silhouettes—sometimes stark, sometimes richly embellished—designed for movement and to propel the wearer into a more theatrical, seductive nocturnal world.
The dialogue between natural and artificial continues in the accessories. Jewellery in enamel and resin, saturated with color, evokes the shimmering effect of an Impressionist painting, while genuine mother-of-pearl is reinterpreted through artificially tinted hues. Cap-toed boots in supple pastel leathers wrap the foot like a second skin, reinforcing the collection’s slightly surreal aesthetic.
The bags move between practicality and fantasy: from the suede beige flap bag featuring the “divan matelassé” motif—taken directly from the couch in Gabrielle Chanel’s apartment and destined to become a new classic—to the new kinetic lock bag and the striking pomegranate-shaped minaudière, finished with enamelled iridescence.
With this collection, Chanel reaffirms its identity: a balance between reality and imagination, between garments that accompany everyday life and those that allow for transformation. As Gabrielle Chanel once suggested, we need dresses that crawl—and dresses that fly.
