Luxury fashion house Chanel presents its Spring Summer 2026 collection as a dialogue between Maison’s founder Gabrielle Chanel and its new Artistic Director of Fashion Activities, Matthieu Blazy. Built as three acts: Un Paradoxe, Le Jour, and L’Universel, the show explores the balance of masculine and feminine codes, the tension between memory and innovation, and the universality of Chanel’s language in fashion.
The story begins with garments rooted in menswear, a nod to the personal history Gabrielle Chanel shared with Boy Capel. A shirt originally made by Charvet, reinterpreted today with Chanel’s input, anchors the opening look. Weighted with a chain, its proportions stay loyal to traditional tailoring. Suit jackets appear raw-edged yet refined in Chanel’s measure, while tweeds, pressured, crisp, and purposeful, reveal a British foundation reshaped into Parisian identity. The paradox emerges in the way practicality coexists with sensuality: knits drape, knot, and flow from day into night, allowing the feminine to assert itself within a wardrobe infused with masculine structure.
Chanel is about love. The birth of Modernity in fashion comes from a love story. This is what I find most
beautiful. It has no time or space; this is an idea of freedom. The freedom worn and won by Gabrielle
Chanel. – Matthieu Blazy
Daywear reflects the lived quality of Chanel clothing, garments that seem to carry histories. The 2.55 bag appears crumpled and worn, with its burgundy lining shown like a secret memory made visible. Camellias, not perfect but rumpled, decorate knitted silk suits, and tweeds evolve through frayed edges and precise embroidery. Chanel’s design language translates into clothing that feels both familiar and new. Black and white graphics reference Art Deco geometry and even the house’s packaging, expressed through fluid silks. Florals shed naturalism to become painted abstractions, unfurling as motifs that blur between print and petal.
The third act extends Chanel’s vocabulary outward, envisioning a shared future. Blousons revisit the masculine thread introduced earlier, yet here they soften, rounded into new silhouettes. Tweeds gain fresh dimensions through diverse weaves and silk linings that carry prints on their interiors. Techniques echo Chanel fundamentals: tweed transformed into hand-knotted knits, or transparency integrated into suiting. Jewelry layers richness onto the clothing, combining baroque pearls, enamelled chains, and sculptural glass forms. Footwear retains the iconic two-tone toe but emphasizes wearability, anchoring the forward motion that defines the collection’s conclusion.
Blazy positions Chanel as a place where codes constantly evolve. The dialogue between Gabrielle and himself reveals Chanel as a living lexicon. The paradox of masculine and feminine, the memory of lived clothing, and the idea of universality form the triad of SS26. Each act reflects an insistence on freedom: the freedom Gabrielle claimed in her own life and the freedom carried forward through every Chanel woman today.
