Backstage at Paris fashion week, the script is rarely the same. Some designers smile. Some talk a great deal without revealing much. And every now and then, someone reaches for a Coco Chanel quote from a 1950s Le Figaro interview. Matthieu Blazy, at least, did. “Fashion is both caterpillar and butterfly. 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.”
We’ve been to Mars, the New York subway, and a mushroom patch, all in Matthieu Blazy’s world (although Karl Lagerfeld does come to mind). For Fall 2026, the stop was a construction zone, lit up by red, green, blue, and yellow industrial skeletons scattered across an iridescent runway. “I was interested in the idea of building a dream…” Blazy told Vogue. Of course, I immediately pictured the front row. All the people who might nod along while imagining lending a hand to the maintenance crew of the Eiffel Tower in their dreams. “…a work in progress,” he continued, and I quickly snapped out of it. Gabrielle Chanel was the one to take inspiration from the working class and build a luxury empire on it, after all.
Naturally, a caterpillar was the first to walk out, a black skirt suit in a ribbed merino-silk knit, dotted with gold buttons. Second came Bhavitha Mandava in a long zip-up in beige, which instantly transported us to her Métiers d’Art opening. At some point, the butterflies started to appear in what Blazy likes to call “the central canvas,” the classic tweed suits, of course, though not so classic anymore. What followed were drop-waist skirts, slip dresses, 3D floral appliqués, a clash of patterns and sparkle.
Blazy’s first collection for the maison dropped in stores only days ago, yet many of them have already been emptied. The ones that haven’t are now dealing with fashion fanatics willing to wait hours outside just to get their hands on pairs, plural, of shoes, at the very least. If anyone is stressed about this collection, it’s probably a Chanel sales assistant at Rue Cambon, who has surely had a front-row seat to the madness.
