The Blazy Edit: Investing in the New Chanel
Matthieu Blazy’s first Chanel ready-to-wear collection, now in stores in 2026, marks a subtle but important shift in the house’s direction. At first glance, it may feel like a departure from what many consider classic Chanel — but look closer and the codes remain entirely intact. The camellia, the chain, the quilting, the hardware: nothing has been removed. What has changed is the feeling. The collection is looser, softer, less concerned with proving itself. It is Chanel recalibrated for the way people actually live, which turns out to be exactly what people are longing for.
These are the pieces we'd invest in: chosen for what they say about where Chanel is going under Blazy, and considered enough to build a wardrobe around for years to come.
The Camellia, Worn Boldly
The camellia has always been one of Chanel's signatures — a small, precise bloom worn close to the lapel, understated to the point of invisibility. Blazy's version is none of those things. Large, dimensional, and worn with confidence, the oversized camellia brooch is one of the collection's most arresting gestures. Pedro Pascal wore one to the Oscars and made the argument more clearly than any campaign could: this is not a delicate archive reference dusted off for the occasion. It is a statement, worn by someone who understood exactly what they were doing.
The investment case is straightforward. A piece this closely tied to a creative director's debut — and this visually arresting — will only accumulate meaning over time. It is an object that, in twenty years, will tell a very specific story about where Chanel was in 2026. And that is worth something.
How to wear it: Let it be the only thing. A white shirt, a dark blazer, a clean trouser — and the camellia. Resist the instinct to layer further. Its scale means it works best when everything around it steps back and accepts the situation.
FASHION That Moves
If there is a single idea running through Blazy's collection, it is this: fashion should move. The silhouettes are relaxed in a way that feels considered rather than casual — blazers cut with a gentle shoulder and cropped hems that manage to be both undone and precise; dresses in fabrics that breathe and shift with the body; trousers with an ease that tailoring rarely permits without apology. Nothing is stiff. Nothing is performing.
The bags carry the same conviction. Larger, softer shapes in a subtly grained leather that feels tactile and lived-in without tipping into informality. Margot Robbie and Pedro Pascal have both been seen with them, which tells you something about how the house is positioning this new silhouette. These are bags for people who move through the world rather than bags that move through events.
The shopping bag format deserves particular mention. Large enough to carry a genuine day's worth of life, worn on the shoulder with a naturalness that the classic Chanel bag shapes never quite allowed, it is — apart from the Chanel 25 — the most practical thing the house has produced in years. Practicality and elegance have always been in tension at Chanel. Blazy appears to have decided, sensibly, that they don't have to be.
How to wear it: Build outfits around the looseness rather than against it. A relaxed blazer works best over something equally unstructured — a silk slip, a simple tee, wide-leg trousers in a complementary weight. Let the bag follow the same logic: carry it full, wear it without ceremony, resist the urge to over-style it. The ease is entirely the point.
The contrast rim
Blazy has deployed contrast rimmed detailing across the collection — on bag flaps, trench coat hems, scarves, and hardware. It is a nod to the contrast piping and bordered edges that ran through Chanel's earlier decades, but rendered here with enough lightness to avoid feeling like a history lesson. It reads less as nostalgia and more as a wink from someone who has done their research and decided what's worth keeping.
As a detail, it adds definition without adding formality — which is harder to achieve than it sounds. A trench coat with a rimmed hem looks considered without looking stiff. A bag with a contrasting bordered flap carries a graphic quality that holds its interest both in person and on a screen, which in 2026 counts for something.
How to wear it: The rimmed detail works best as the sole graphic element in an outfit. Keep everything else tonal, keep the palette clean, and let the border make its case uninterrupted. It doesn't need help.
The Rectangular Toe
The rounded toe — a Chanel shoe signature for long enough that it stopped being noticed — arrives this season in a rectangular form. On paper, a minor adjustment. In practice, it changes everything about how the shoe reads: more graphic, more directional, more contemporary without sacrificing the elegance that made the original worth wearing in the first place. Paired with the turnlock hardware running through the collection, it becomes part of a larger and more interesting conversation about how much a familiar form can change when you alter just one considered element of it. The answer, it turns out, is quite a lot.
How to wear it: The rectangular toe earns its keep with wide-leg or straight-cut trousers that break just above the shoe — the clean lines of both reinforce each other without competing. With a midi skirt or a tailored short, the toe adds structure to an otherwise fluid silhouette. Keep everything else simple. The shoe is already making a point.
Chanel Classics Reimagined
This is perhaps the most consequential strand of the collection for anyone thinking seriously about a long-term wardrobe. Blazy has taken a number of the house's most enduring forms and shifted them — enough to feel current, not so much that they lose what made them worth having in the first place. It is, in other words, exactly what a new creative director at a house like this should do, and rarer than it sounds.
The Mini Kelly bag arrives in chevron quilting rather than the classic diamond, which changes its character entirely — more directional, more graphic, but still structured and unimpeachably Chanel. The Chanel 25 appears with coloured rims that introduce a note of playfulness without compromising the silhouette. The turnlock — one of the house's oldest hardware signatures — reappears across bags, shoes, and button-down shirts, functioning less as a fastening and more as a recurring visual argument: this is still Chanel, just with different things to say.
Then there is the chain. The interlocked links of the 2.55 — arguably the most recognisable hardware in fashion, which is a considerable thing to be — have been lifted from the bag and reimagined as jewellery. A bracelet. A necklace. Worn alone or layered, they carry the full weight of the reference without requiring the bag to be present. The chain has always been what people noticed first about a Chanel bag. Blazy has simply acknowledged that and acted accordingly.
How to wear it: Mix one reimagined classic with pieces that are genuinely, quietly timeless — a well-cut coat, a plain knit, a simple trouser. The interest comes from the tension between the familiar and the shifted. The goal is a wardrobe that feels current without ever appearing to chase it.
Building the Blazy Closet
What ties all of this together is feeling rather than form. Blazy's Chanel is relaxed but precise, playful but serious, rooted in the archive but not remotely imprisoned by it. A wardrobe built around these ideas doesn't require every piece to come from this collection — it requires a point of view and the discipline to hold it.
Start with one investment piece that feels most essentially Blazy: the camellia, the soft tote, the reimagined classic, the chain worn as jewellery. Build around it with pieces that share its energy — things that move, things that breathe, things that don't demand too much of the person wearing them. Add the rimmed detail or the turnlock as an accent rather than a centrepiece. And resist, firmly, the instinct to over-complete the look. The new Chanel, at its best, leaves room for the person wearing it to be the most interesting thing in it.
That, in the end, is what makes it worth investing in.
We are working on an editorial on how to create the Chanel spring summer look. This edit will include our picks in fashion and beauty. Stay tuned.
CREDITS
Styling
Wearing Chanel SS26
Visual Art
All imagery on Currant is created in-house, as part of our commitment to thoughtful and original visual storytelling. The images from this editorial are from the series “Chanel 26”.
INSIDE CHANEL
This journal sits within our Inside: Chanel essay, where we follow the house across 2026 — its collections, its objects, its ideas. A year-long look at one of fashion's most enduring institutions.
ON SOCIAL MEDIA