Photo-Illustration: by The Cut; Photos: Courtesy of Chanel
Chanel, which is now in the hands of a 41-year-old designer named Matthieu Blazy, is the most radical thing to happen in fashion in a while. And it’s not radical simply because Blazy, in his collection on Tuesday, eliminated most of the structure in the clothes and didn’t show a single tweed suit, a Chanel trademark. Nor is it radical because the clothes look light in both materials and attitude, and skim over the body, a body that may belong to a woman in her 40s or 50s.
Chanel is radical because Blazy has had the sense to throw out a lot of the nonsense in fashion. I found it interesting, for example, that he didn’t bother in his first haute couture collection for the house to offer a new shape. Presenting some kind of new shape, or modifying an existing one in a sharp way, is usually how people in the industry define good work. But Chanel is a shape. It’s the straight-line suit that Gabrielle Chanel laid down in the 1920s to eliminate the erotic areas of a woman’s body and thus put her on more equal terms with a man. You can rethink that shape and its significance, which Blazy has done in both his spring ready-to-wear collection, last October, and the couture, but you don’t need to reinvent it. That is unchained thinking in an industry that can be remarkably doctrinaire in its opinions and assumptions.
Is a two-piece dress in sheer red mousseline old-fashioned because of its mid-calf pleated skirt, matching cardigan jacket, and proportions? Or does it coolly subvert those values by appearing indifferent to them, and with a lovely set of undergarments to finesse the transparency? A pale-green silk shirtdress with a dropped waist and a mock belt forces the same question. Is it old-fashioned partly because it’s worn with a coat of the same fabric that has been embroidered in green, blue, and white with birds and mushrooms? Or does it, in fact, embody Chanel’s evergreen idea of freedom, in movement and spirit? The cut of the coat is based on a masculine style. The outfit could be worn for day or night. In short, its distinctiveness is hard to pin down.
From left: Photo: Courtesy of ChanelPhoto: Courtesy of Chanel
From top: Photo: Courtesy of ChanelPhoto: Courtesy of Chanel
After his ready-to-wear show, I wrote that Blazy had widened the frame of fashion by showing us what is possible via Chanel, and he continues to amaze me. It’s his openness that I admire most, and he also recognizes that many, many people are looking for that freshness as well. Fashion can be so fake, dishonest, or aimed primarily at celebrities.
During a visit the other day to the Chanel studio, Blazy said the initial impulse for the collection came from a haiku about a bird and a mushroom. (Hence the field of giant red and pink mushrooms on pale-pink carpeting and seating for the circular set in the Grand Palais.)
He said, “I wanted to do something that feels poetic, like a little break from the news that we are watching — a moment of lightness. Birds are so free. They travel. They have a different point of view. It’s a metaphor for women.”
Blazy went on to say that during his recent show in New York, in a subway station, he met a woman who walked in that show, and he was inspired by her. She’s French, from Guadalupe, in her 50s, has curly salt-and-pepper hair, once worked as a model, and lives in Pennsylvania. “She’s the modern Gabrielle,” he said, of the woman who opened the couture show. Around that same time, Blazy found a suit in the archive that Chanel made from mousseline, a fabric then used as a support for embroidery. “She was the first to use it for a garment,” he said.
Photo: Courtesy of Chanel
That discovery led Blazy to the transparent opening looks in the show, all with specially made sets of underwear and all projecting a relaxed attitude, inherent in the cut of the clothes. He cast a number of women who aren’t runway regulars, both young and mature, and he kept hair and makeup natural. The only bag was a mousseline version shown with the first looks and containing a white handkerchief embroidered with words. The gesture was telling: If a client wants something personal stitched in her clothes — a lover’s name, a child’s — the Chanel ateliers will do that for her.
Photo: Courtesy of Chanel
Another thing that Blazy did with this collection was to design all the clothes on the body. There were no sketches. Instead, Blazy and his main design assistants, along with the chiefs of the couture ateliers, discussed the sensibility and gestures he was after, and they built the styles directly on a model. “I didn’t want to sketch because I didn’t want to know the result,” he explained. “It would break the creativity.” He added, “You get better results just talking. These people [in the ateliers] are extraordinary. They have the culture.”
Apart from a dramatic number that consisted of a huge white feathered headpiece — rather like an exotic bird’s nest — shown with a rich red silk crêpe gown and a pair of ruched capes, Blazy’s shapes were simple and nearly all extremely lightweight, even with embroidery. Among the most dazzling were a tank dress with irregularly shaped triangles and half-moons filled in with tiny strands of beads that, over the length of the dress, went from pale green to jade to blue-black, and another tank, lightly skimming the body, embroidered in a messy melange of knots and beads. In a few, small places, Blazy left the embroiderer’s off-white canvas exposed.
From left: Photo: Courtesy of ChanelPhoto: Courtesy of Chanel
From top: Photo: Courtesy of ChanelPhoto: Courtesy of Chanel
Near the very end of the show, he sent out three immaculate tailored suits in black wool, with a minimum of detailing, one with red toucan buttons at the cuffs. I thought this was something Jonathan Anderson might have done in his Dior couture debut — make a concise yet simple statement about the rigor of tailoring, its unanswerable beauty.
From left: Photo: Courtesy of ChanelPhoto: Courtesy of Chanel
From top: Photo: Courtesy of ChanelPhoto: Courtesy of Chanel
I loved thinking about Blazy’s show, with Joan Baez’s clear voice filling the Grand Palais as the women strolled around the magic mushrooms. You can open up people’s minds.
Blazy said, “I think that the best way to be modern now is to reappropriate words that are dismissed. Sweet. Amazing. Joy. Poetry.” He thought for a moment and then added, “One of my favorite designers is Rick Owens. He has created a world, it’s extraordinary. But he cannot be the only way. To be radical is not to be only hard. Maybe sweet is also radical.”
