Matthieu Blazy Marks One Year at Chanel by Hanging 100 Birds From the Grand Palais Ceiling
A year into the job, Chanel's creative director built his Spring/Summer 2027 show around Gabrielle Chanel's own escape from Edwardian corsetry, complete with a glass runway, a glowing moon, and Nicole Kidman reading Virginia Woolf. Eighty-three looks later, the message was clear: freedom is the whole brand now.
Chanel closed out its Spring/Summer 2027 show at the Grand Palais in Paris on October 5, 2026, marking creative director Matthieu Blazy's first full year at the house. The set alone made the stakes clear: roughly 100 suspended birds, a massive illuminated moon, and a runway floor of multicolored glass that threw the models' reflections back at the audience.
Across 83 looks, Blazy built the collection around Gabrielle Chanel's own transformation, from the Edwardian corsetry she rejected to the menswear tailoring she borrowed and the liberated silhouettes she eventually built her name on. The result mixed corset-inspired tops with flowing skirts, ballet-leaning dresses with billowing tulle, smocked tweed engineered for actual movement, sheer knits, pearl embroidery, and "cloud dresses" with floating panels, alongside accessories like a birdcage minaudiere. Actress Nicole Kidman provided voiceover narration drawn from Virginia Woolf, reinforcing a show built explicitly around a woman deciding what freedom should look like.
The front row did its part to sell the story, with Kidman visibly dancing in her seat alongside Dua Lipa, Pedro Pascal, Marion Cotillard, Kristen Wiig, Sandra Huller, and Alexa Demie. A year in, Blazy's Chanel is no longer being judged on whether he can handle the house's codes; this show was the clearest sign yet that he is actively rewriting them.
Source: Marie Claire Australia
Kyle Duford, Founder & Editor, BRNDWIRE. More from Kyle →
