Fashion

The Most Magical Show of Couture Week Belonged to Chanel

BYKhaoula Ghanem

July 13, 2026

For his second haute couture collection at Chanel, Matthieu Blazy wants you to believe in magic. If his debut was about reintroducing the codes of the house through his own meticulous, tactile lens, his Chanel Fall 2026 Couture collection felt like the moment he loosened his grip.

Models emerged beneath towering poppies and lupins that transformed the Grand Palais into an oversized enchanted garden while Howard Shore’s The Lord of the Rings score swelled overhead. The opening look arrived carrying a tiny century-old leather-bound book of fairytales that once belonged to Gabrielle Chanel herself, setting the tone before a single look was sent down the runway.

Fairytales are dangerous territory for fashion. They are easy to descend into costume, nostalgia, or theatrical excess, but Blazy understood the trap. The collection took its narrative cue from the English fairytale Jack and the Beanstalk, with three recurring silhouettes symbolizing the magical bean’s stages of growth. Buttons climbing the spine of a dress quietly transformed from the Ugly Duckling into a swan. A minaudière took the form of Goldilocks’ sleeping golden bear. The lining of a tweed jacket revealed a painstakingly hand-painted scene from Puss in Boots, hidden until movement exposed it.

The irony, of course, is that Chanel’s greatest fairytale has never belonged to fiction. Backstage, Blazy described Coco Chanel’s own rise from orphan to the world’s most influential couturière as his favorite fairytale of them all. It’s an apt comparison.

It is also impossible to separate this show from the narrative surrounding Blazy himself. When Virginie Viard departed in 2024, speculation over Chanel’s next creative director reached fever pitch. Few appointments in fashion carry quite as much weight. Chanel is arguably the industry’s most commercially powerful luxury house, but it is also one of its most rigidly codified. Every designer inherits the camellia, the tweed, the two-tone shoe, the pearls, and the ghost of Coco herself. Blazy has approached that inheritance with unusual confidence.

This season, tweed appeared disguised as something closer to woodland moss, exploding into shaggy coats that looked as though they had sprouted organically from the forest floor. Tiny embroidered daisies punctuated the textured surface like wildflowers growing through underbrush. Elsewhere, an extraordinary dress seemed entirely constructed from tangled necklaces, forgotten brooches, broken chains, buttons, and pearls, as if decades of Chanel bijoux had somehow been gathered together by magpies and stitched into couture.

Nature surfaced repeatedly, but never predictably. Delicate vines climbed sheer tailoring, floral embroidery escaped across translucent organza, and featherwork dissolved into painterly blossoms. One spectacular dress transformed birds into architecture, with embroidered wings stretching across the bodice in shimmering relief before cascading into soft plumage at the hem. Even the shoes joined the fantasy. Chanel’s iconic cap-toe pumps reappeared balanced on sculptural heels shaped like pea pods, butterflies, and blooming roses.

There were quieter moments, too such as a liquid one-shoulder chiffon gown that floated across the runway with almost no visible structure, proving that restraint can be just as technically impressive as embellishment. Meanwhile, a draped caramel jersey dress with delicate jewelry-like adornments framing the neckline showed Blazy’s understanding that modern couture clients do not live exclusively inside fantasy but they attend dinners, galas, weddings, and board meetings before they attend balls.

There is, admittedly, a fine line between whimsy and sentimentality, and a handful of looks occasionally drifted toward storybook illustration more than fashion proposition. But even then, the craftsmanship remained staggering enough to justify the fantasy. Every feather, bead, thread, and appliqué reminded you that couture still represents thousands of hours of human labor in an industry increasingly obsessed with speed.

Perhaps that is the real fairytale Blazy is telling: the continued relevance of haute couture itself in an era ruled by algorithms, instant gratification, and disposable trends. He is asking audiences to slow down, look closer, and believe that clothes can still surprise us and that may be the most magical trick of all.