A Softer Strength
Review of Chanel Spring 2026 Couture Fashion Show
By Mackenzie Richard Zuckerman
The stakes were high – Matthieu Blazy’s couture debut for Chanel arrived with all the weight of house legacy and the scrutiny that follows a newly appointed creative voice. But Chanel didn’t lead with pressure. It led with a dream. In the days before the show, the house released a fantastical short film in which woodland creatures, full of life and imagination, took up residence in the atelier – cutting, sewing, and crafting garments with a kind of storybook delight. The film set the tone for what followed: a show staged under the glass dome of the Grand Palais Éphémère, where towering candy-colored mushrooms and drooping pink willows transformed the space into a surreal enchanted forest. It was theatrical in scale, deeply referential in tone –evoking Karl’s era of spectacle, yet the clothes told a quieter story.
This collection followed a bold Métiers d’Art outing for the house, one that channeled volume, texture, and visual indulgence. Here, Blazy offered something else entirely: a study in restraint. The fantasy wasn’t in the silhouette, it was in the sensitivity. The question he seemed to pose was subtle but pointed: Can couture still feel poetic, personal, and emotionally resonant – without shouting?
THE COLLECTION
THE VIBE
Soft Power, Emotional Precision, & Modern Whimsy
Blazy approached this collection with a poet’s hand and a patternmaker’s eye. His intention wasn’t to reimagine couture as spectacle, but to ground it in intimacy – in the relationship between garment and wearer, soul and silhouette. He worked within Chanel’s famously codified vocabulary, respecting the geometry of the house’s tailoring while introducing a softness that never felt tentative. The opening look – a mousseline Chanel suit rendered in sheer silk – set the tone. It was light, deliberate, and precise, a visual memory of the house’s layered past reinterpreted through transparency and grace. Throughout the collection, tokens of femininity –lipsticks, bottles of N°5, embroidered love letters – appeared subtly, tucked into pockets or suspended like secrets along the chain of a classic bag. They weren’t just embellishments; they were emotional artifacts, echoing the show notes’ assertion that these garments are as much about the wearer as the designer.
That sentiment came through most clearly in the sheer looks, which read as more than sensuality. They revealed discipline—physical, emotional, even philosophical. In a cultural moment where wellness, longevity, and health are quietly replacing logos as the ultimate luxury signals, these garments invited conversation. They gave the body a voice. For high-net-worth clients, a dress like this offers more than elegance—it offers an opportunity to share, to signal investment in self, to be seen as someone with a perspective. There was wit and fantasy too—birds imagined as embroidery and shape, from magpies to cockatoos, tying the garments back to the dreamlike world of the set. And while the plumage was often suggested, never literal, the message was clear: transformation doesn’t always require costume.
By stripping away the impulse toward sculptural theatrics, Blazy redirected our attention—toward cut, gesture, and the quiet symbolism that lives in craft. It allowed the details to breathe, and the work of the ateliers to take center stage. This was a collection that created intrigue without abandoning the codes that make Chanel, Chanel. It felt commercial in the best sense—distinctive, considered, and ultimately wearable. For those looking for theatrics, there were other stages this couture season. Blazy, knowingly, offered something else: an invitation to pause, and to look more closely.
THE DIRECTION
THE WRAP UP
Blazy’s first couture collection for Chanel didn’t try to stake a claim through volume or provocation. Instead, it laid a quiet but confident foundation – one that respected the house’s architecture, invited the wearer into its emotional interior, and allowed room for nuance. The decision to lead with softness, to let the set carry the theatrics while the garments spoke in a gentler register, felt deeply considered. It wasn’t a lack of ambition – it was an understanding of the terrain. After the visual maximalism of Métiers d’Art, this collection offered a recalibration: couture as reflection, not declaration.
That’s not to say it lacked range. The color story moved from powder-soft to painterly and bold; silhouettes balanced delicacy with structure. But perhaps most importantly, the collection felt wearable in a way that still carried mystery. It gave clients something to inhabit and interpret – something that made them look interesting, like they had a point of view. That, more than trend or tension, is often what couture buyers seek.
There will be those who dismiss this collection as too light, too soft, too safe. But that perspective mistakes softness for fragility. In reality, this was a quietly emotional collection – one that chose gentleness as a stance, not an escape. To embrace whimsy, to hold space for beauty in a world that often rewards spectacle, requires conviction. It takes a kind of strength to see things clearly and still choose to offer grace.
What Blazy offered here was a kind of trust. Trust in the codes, in the woman who wears Chanel, and in the idea that legacy doesn’t always need to be reinvented – it can simply be seen anew. Couture doesn’t have to be loud to leave an echo. Sometimes it just has to linger.
