There was one look at Chanel Spring/Summer 2027 that I kept wanting to see again. Look 42, in red, is a jacket layered over a sleeveless dress, and both layers are trompe-l’oeil: an optical illusion of a tweed ensemble printed onto silk. From a distance, it reads as a structured tweed jacket and skirt. Up close, it is all flowy silk, and once the model moves, the structure you thought you were looking at gives way. That is where the collection clicked for me.
Image: Courtesy of Chanel
Matthieu Blazy titled this chapter of his conversation with Gabrielle Chanel Different Faces of the Same Coin. In the show notes, he writes about “the women within a woman”, and Louise de Vilmorin’s Mémoires de Coco has Chanel looking back at the child she once was and recognising her in the woman she became.
In a world where ‘you can’t have it all’ still gets played back at women, we’re expected to be many things at once. Look 42 made that feel very literal: a trompe-l’oeil of structured tweed printed onto fluid silk. The tweed is still there visually, but the silk makes the whole thing softer and closer to the skin. Isn’t that the whole point? Being one version does not mean leaving the others behind.
Images: Courtesy of Chanel
The show opens with Dyanira Hurbuscher in a sheer slip dress, a fitted, layered crochet styled to look as if it is worn underneath the clothes. She carries Gabrielle Chanel’s own 2.55 from the Patrimoine archive, and the same model and bag return at the end, so the show finishes where it started.
Above us at the Grand Palais, huge illuminated birds hung over a floor that picked up the colour and light. We were up in the sky with Blazy, and the birds kept appearing in the clothes too, from buttons and embroidery to the hardware on tweed jackets and hems that opened almost like wings. Then the music went from classical into Britney Spears’ Gimme More. One minute you are looking at Gabrielle Chanel’s archive, the next it is “It’s Britney, b*tch.”
Images: Courtesy of Chanel
As the show continues, the new smocked tweed moves differently from the tweed we know. Big belts sit low and move with the hips, and the hourglass shape keeps coming back in different forms. Shoulders keep their shape without becoming rigid, and hems open and move. From look 15, the looks go ballet meets bird, with voluminous skirts up in the sky. Look 16 reminded me of Edgar Degas’s Little Fourteen-Year-Old Dancer (1881).
Image: Courtesy of Chanel
From look 21 there is a strong clash of nature-inspired prints in softer hourglass silhouettes: a printed top, skirt and boots for a multilayered look, then a dressier version with a jacket and skirt mix-matched in another print and colour. Look 54 is a flowy sky-printed dress with floor drape, and the blue stars cape worn by Anok Yai in look 55 felt dreamy. Together they looked ceremonial, almost a coming of age, with sky elements. The cloud-printed silks mark morning, golden hour and nightfall.
Image: Courtesy of Chanel
Rachel Ojuromi recreated the Chanel Métiers d’Art show on social media in Lagos using pieces she could find locally. Blazy saw the post, and months later she was inside the Grand Palais walking the show, on her first trip outside Africa. A young woman in Lagos made Chanel her own
Image: Courtesy of Chanel
The interpretation came before the invitation. Gabrielle Chanel’s own 2.55 brings literal history onto the runway, while some of the newer accessories move much further away from what you expect to see. There is a new take on the classic flap, an ultra-elongated clutch from look 5, new handbag silhouettes with an embroidered effect you want to touch and an embossed clutch
Images: Courtesy of Chanel
Images: Courtesy of Chanel
A 2.55 flap in a mix-match print from the collection feels like a bag that will be known for its era in many years to come (look 79). The multipocket bag in looks 67 and 69 felt very new for the brand. The 3D bag is the one I kept looking at (look 81). Its sculptural surface holds onto a recognisable Chanel shape, and I need to see more of it before I know.
Revisiting look 42, there is more than meets the eye: a jacket layered over a sleeveless dress, which echoes the layered idea the show opened on. The jacket never really disappears; you still see the structure while the silk sits lightly against the body. Both can be true at the same time, which is probably what I connected with most, and I still want another look.
