This is Not Your Granny’s Chanel

Your grandmother’s Chanel this most certainly is not.

For his fourth runway collection for the French house, artistic director Matthieu Blazy showcased the usual tweed suits, of course, but in a range of bold colors and covered in dense, often fanciful, embellishments that are probably too daring for most Chanel stans, but will be just right for the handful of customers that want to stand out and can actually afford to buy such labor-intensive pieces.

Indeed, while Karl Lagerfeld’s Chanel so often felt like an exercise in branding (and Virginie Viard’s an exercise in blanding), the eclecticism and boldness of Blazy’s Chanel seems more focused on creating wow pieces for the individuals brave enough to wear them than churning out yet another collection of “timeless” tweeds. It’s a welcome change from the countless iterations of the classic black, white, or pastel pink Chanel suits that we’ve all seen a million times from Chanel over the years. Classic, muted colors might be more commercial, more easily identifiable as ‘chic,’ but it takes a real artist to work with color, especially bright colors. And so many of them at once.

Blazy said in his show notes that he was inspired by butterflies, offering up a quote from Gabrielle Chanel herself as a starting point: “Fashion is both caterpillar and butterfly,” said Chanel. “Be a caterpillar by day and a butterfly by night. There is nothing more comfortable than a caterpillar and nothing more made for love than a butterfly. We need dresses that crawl and dresses that fly. The butterfly doesn’t go to the market, and the caterpillar doesn’t go to the ball.”

“Chanel is a paradox,” said Blazy. “Chanel is function, Chanel is fiction. Chanel is sensible, Chanel is seductive. Chanel is day, Chanel is night. It represents the freedom to choose between the caterpillar and the butterfly whenever you want. I wish to create a canvas for women to be unapologetically who they are and who they want to be.”

This is not to say that every look was a home run. Honestly, the super low belts on many of the skirts and dresses reminded me of that scene in Clueless when the skater guys at Cher’s school are walking away from the camera with their pants sagged down below their butts.

Except that in Blazy’s version, the “young dudes” of the ’90s have been replaced with the “bright young things” of the 1920s with a little 80s working girl mixed in for good measure. Does it work? Um… I’m honestly not convinced. The lowness of those waist lines and the chunkiness of those belts goes a little too far for me. But points to Blazy for really going there. I’d rather see a big swing and a miss at this point than another bunt.

And there were certainly plenty of hits in this collection too: the dresses were lovely — even the busy silk ones with all the embroidery from early in the show, which I initially found to be too much, but have started to grow on me since. In a world of bland minimalism and “quiet luxury” it’s nice to see something so thoroughly maximalist.

And there were still lots of pieces in there for the Chanel purists to buy if they so choose. And doubtless the boutiques will be full of even more commercial pieces that never appeared on the runway in the first place.

I’m sure there are plenty of people out there bemoaning the death of the same old same old at Chanel, but, honestly, let them whine about it. Most of those people were probably only ever going to buy the cap toe ballet flats, big black sunglasses, and quilted leather flap bags anyway. Boring! Blazy has so much more to offer than the same recycled black and white tweed snooze fest far too many people associate with Chanel. I, for one, hope he keeps pushing himself and the brand forward and I look forward to many more fashion provocations to come.

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