2 MIN READ
Tweed is perhaps the most recognizable element of Chanel, but also the one that, after decades of jackets, suits, buttons and constructions that have become iconic, risks looking the most overused. The quality remains, the craftsmanship too, but for a maison like Chanel today it is a matter of turning the page, at least in part, or rather of interpreting that heritage in a more contemporary key.
Matthieu Blazy seems to have taken this road starting precisely from tweed. Deconstructing it means working on one of the maison’s most established symbols: gradually abandoning the rigidity of the famous fitted suits, opening up the weaves, fraying the surfaces, lightening the fits. It is already a sign of change: altering the shape without erasing the Chanel matrix. It is not yet a turning point, but certainly the beginning of a new direction.
The shapes and fabrics are the ones we know, apart from a few variations, and Chanel is still Chanel at first glance. But in several passages something changes. The tweed is opened, frayed, lightened, almost undone; it loses some of the composure of the more classic constructions and gains movement. The proportions change, the fit changes, and above all the way the garment rests on the body changes.
A coat keeps the material, buttons and recognizability of the maison, but the surface becomes irregular, the threads remain visible, the construction looks less rigid. Underneath, dresses and weaves seem in turn opened up, worn, deliberately imperfect. The result is less composed and decidedly younger.
The choice of models also contributes to changing the perception. Those same materials, worn on very young girls and with a freer fit, lose the weight of a certain traditional idea of Chanel. Not because it is erased: it remains perfectly legible. It is the way of wearing it that changes.
Naturally, not the whole collection proceeds with the same intensity. There are looks very close to forms that have long belonged to the maison and others in which the intervention is more evident. And it is precisely in the latter that the most interesting direction can be glimpsed: not replacing what Chanel has been, but working on material, proportions and construction to bring it into the present.
Blazy seems to have understood that with a maison like Chanel the new does not necessarily have to arrive through a grand gesture. It can also come from a loose thread, a less compact weave, a silhouette that loses rigidity and tightness.
GALLERY
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