Lately it has seemed impossible to escape the dominance of the GLP-1 body. As more and more women celebrate their new, skinnier (sometimes healthier) self, in equally new, tinier clothing — waists snatched, skirts hobble-tight — style has evolved to accommodate the demand. Sheath dresses, mermaid dresses, corset dresses, dresses that resculpt the very curves that have disappeared; all often seem to dominate red carpets and runways.
Which is why it is so surprising, almost subversive, to see what the designer Matthieu Blazy has been doing at Chanel. Since his debut for the brand last October, he has essentially been offering what might be called anti-Ozempic-effect collections or beyond-Mounjaro mufti. It’s fashion designed to liberate the body beneath, rather than constrict; fashion as a riposte to the recent status quo. This season’s couture show was no different. There was practically not a piece full of inner scaffolding to be found.
Instead: storytelling, and space to move.
It began with a set filled with creeping beanstalks, floating chairs, megalith flowers and its very own looking glass. It began with fairy tales, Blazy said backstage. That’s not really a big surprise. Chanel itself is having something of a Cinderella moment; one of the few brands able to pack its shops with consumers, and buck the wider downward trend in the industry.
But Blazy was talking more literally: about Goldilocks and the Ugly Duckling, the Scarecrow and Puss in Boots. They were the inspiration for his collection; tales of childhood woven into the clothes on the runway. The lines that created what looked like tweedy plaid on an airy voile shift dress turned out to be haute bean sprouts; the embroidery on a sleeveless chiffon cocktail dress, a collection of swans; the buttons creeping up a chevroned shirt dress actually little cat faces, crowned pearls and (yes) a pair of gold boots.
That could easily seem trite, but Blazy is a designer who marvels: at the skills of his ateliers, the history of the brand he now gets to run, the fact that he was thinking about Jack and the Beanstalk and voilà! There, on the shelf of Coco Chanel’s preserved apartment on Rue Cambon, an old leather-bound book of exactly those magical stories (he turned it into a handbag on the runway). He has been having too much fun opening his eyes in delight at the wonders around him to be cynical, and that makes it hard to be cynical about his clothes.
They have a generosity of spirit that is mirrored in their generosity of cut. Mousseline skirts hitting mostly below the knee, never too tubular but almost always with pockets (Pockets! Every designer should make them). Matching loose shirts and long tunics, vests and shackets; slouchy, schlumpy, but always feather light. Even the tailored shifts and bouclé tweeds — even a trio of magpie looks, loaded up with golden gewgaws so they looked like Chanel by way of Klimt — were clearly made for movement.
So much so that it is hard not to wish that, along with the models of many ages Blazy puts on his runway (one, Stephanie Cavalli, turned 50 the day of the show, the designer said backstage), he also included models of many sizes. It would underscore his point.
And sometimes the cuts can be frumpy, mostly because in avoiding the pencil skirt Blazy tends to get overly blocky with his alternatives. But he isn’t naïve. Consider the fact he chose to put his wedding dress, a sweet, dropped-waist lace confection that ended above the ankle, practically in the middle of the show, and to make his finale look the only one that really came with any structure at all: a vampy black off-the-shoulder number trimmed in raffia that Blazy backstage called his “revenge dress.”
He knows that sometimes in real life Hans Christian Andersen tales veer into Roald Dahl territory. Just as he knows that not everyone is a person of leisure. One long jacket in men’s wear tweed came with silk Post-it notes sewn into the lining and embroidered with an imaginary to-do list. While it’s unlikely the women who can actually afford to buy these clothes are peeling their own potatoes, as part of the soundtrack went, that doesn’t mean they aren’t running their own companies.
In the end, these are clothes made less for the moment that the fairy godmother waves her magic wand and all the glitter dust falls (or the flashbulbs explode) than clothes made to ease the journey it takes to get there. Or at least take big strides up the beanstalk in spectator pumps.
That’s most likely part of why Chanel is working so well. Blazy is not the only couture designer focused on loosening things up and seeing women as more than perfume bottles; Dior’s Jonathan Anderson and Balenciaga’s Pierpaolo Piccioli have been exploring the same ideas. Blazy, however, is smart enough to recognize that, at Chanel, such thinking is part of the birthright.
Almost a century ago, Coco freed women from the tyranny of the corset and in doing so, laid the foundation of what has become an empire. One hundred years later, the man in her place is trying to do some liberating of his own. That’s not a happy ending yet, but it is a good place to start.
